A Sky Full Of Fire (Draft)
by The Wishbone
Summary: AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello everyone, I hope you are all well. I have reclassified this story as a draft, because I am thinking about rewriting it. I was not in a very good place when I started writing this story, taking too long breaks in between writing chapters. The plot and planned ending may stay roughly the same. Tell me what you think. The Wishbone
1. Prologue: The Message

Prologue: The Message

One evening, a Dalek found a message written on a wall.

I suppose, really, that this story should have started with how the Daleks came to be, and all the hundreds of thousands of millions of lives they destroyed, and how they spread across the universe like a disease, until, one day, they vanished in a storm of flames. But, then again, that story has been told too many times before.

It might even be helpful, to explain what a Dalek was, for the charmed generations who did not know. For now, I shall let a single adjective suffice: "evil".

I suppose to be more specific I should have begun with the day that this particular Dalek, made a foolish mistake, which led his followers to doubt him and spelled certain death to our kind. It was a story that my kind did not know, and would have preferred to forget. I knew the story all too well, and frankly, I found the details rather embarrassing. It was an untidy incident, where few of the individuals involved came out unscathed, or unchanged in some way. It would have been a wonderful way to start a story. It answered a lot of questions, and raised several more, to which I and I alone happened to have all the answers. But no.

I start _this_ story, with the day that one of the only surviving Daleks found a message written on the wall of an abandoned subway tunnel under New York City. It took me a long time to reach him, because I wasn't looking for a Dalek. I was searching for a Dalek hybrid. And of course, something that is only half Dalek is barely Dalek at all, according to their creed forged from hundreds of years of manic xenophobia.

I should not have been surprised. To an extent, I already knew what had happened to him. When I had last saw him, he had been a monstrosity, and if anything to see his true body once more confined within the prison of his black casing was of a great comfort to me.

Oh, how I had hated him.

But, when I found him that evening, all I could do was _laugh._

So, on with the story. One evening, a sort-of-Dalek found a message written on a wall. It was written in scrawled white letters in a slightly Grecian script by an unsteady hand, and it said, quite simply:

_CAN YOU HEAR THEM WAITING?_

I imagine that this Dalek was rather vexed in finding these letters. He had taught me how to imagine. He would have been so proud. He was vexed not least because it meant that a human, creatures that are abundant in New York City, had been present, but for petty matters. This tunnel was a rare example of preserved beauty. The chipped porcelain tiles and the stained glass station sign dated from the Art Nouveau period. The meaning of the message was vague and pretentious. The style was crude, but most of all, he felt as though his territory had been invaded. It was _he _who journeyed down to the forgotten roots of the city night after night. It was _his_ underground kingdom. For almost thirty years, it was _he _who had charted the secret rivers and artificial caves that lay empty in the dark. He felt, somehow, that he possessed _something_ of importance, and the under city was his secret land. Although he knew, more than anything, that this was only a fantasy. New York practically bled humans. They had built it after all, and wherever you went you were bound to find them. The humans who did not have houses were the ones he had seen most in the tunnels. Sometimes, he saw the kind that wore head torches.

He looked at the message for a whole minute. Then, he drifted onwards, becoming another part of the darkness.

The very next day, he found the same message a second time. Strangely, he was the only person to notice it. This was surprising, as it was written in a far more prominent place.

It was scrawled, thirty metres in length, across the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge.

In the pink morning light, as the sun crept through the haze, the Dalek hovered under the bridge, as the traffic rumbled continuously above him, reading the message over and over again.

_CAN YOU HEAR THEM WAITING?_

The same white letters, stretched impossibly over the browning girders of the belly of the bridge. Such was the position, that it could only be read when the reader was exactly thirty metres above the water below. No human could have written it. It was too large. No assembly of cables or climbing equipment could have allowed a person to write the message. Its appearance was a mystery. And the Dalek, abnormally intelligent though he was (far too intelligent for his own good) could not fathom how they had come to be there.

The Dalek then, rather disappointingly, did not destroy the bridge. The iconic monument did not then combust and collapse into the Hudson. As I said, he was not an ordinary Dalek.

Instead, he simply glided onwards, out from under the darkness of the bridge and up, up, over the hazy skyline of Manhattan. And as I watched, he rose higher and higher into the air, a tiny black speck against the pink of the rising sun. He pirouetted, and began at once a tiny, private air display. He plunged, like a tremendous weight, towards the gleaming river, only to swoop into ascension at the very last second, as if he weighed little more than paper carried on a thermal. He revolved slowly as he rose once more, round and round, and the motion was at once clunky and strangely graceful. He then flew in a pattern, rinsing and dropping at random intervals, carving untraceable shapes into the air. The acrobatics were too early in the morning, to discreet, to have been for the humans on the bridge, in the skyscrapers, or on the shore. The flight had no purpose but for the pure enjoyment of the performer. In a world full of grounded beings, he could fly, and break free from planet to which he had been bound. In the past, such frivolities would have disgusted me.

But now, all I could do was laugh.

I had known him well, once. He had been the deep sort, and often quiet. Far more quiet or deep than was average for our race. Now, years later, he was still deep and all the more silent. But humanity had shaped him. He had dwelt among it too long. It had clung to him, like a bad scent. And time too, had twisted his body and made him impossible. As I watched him fly, I thought of how careless it seemed, how illogical, how unlike the individual I had known so long ago.

_But I had changed too. If the Supreme One knew what I had become, of the things that I had seen, how I had grown in mind, would he have risen, like a feather in an updraft, into the sky?_

_Would he have forgotten those pretentious words written under the bridge?_

Because still, they waited. And in a paradox, by waiting, they came closer and closer, like a beating heart becoming faster and faster when engorged with fear.

And still, when I looked into the swaying veil of the future, I saw Manhattan burning.


	2. Chapter One: 2009

Chapter One: 2009

"For the love of God Sec. Are you deliberately trying to get shot down by the FBI or are you just trying to piss me off?"

I was standing in the corner, and even though those words were not directed to me, I felt myself wince.

The abhorrent slimy creature that was sat in the centre of the room did not.

He blinked his single blue eye, as if bored by the ranting.

But the ranting did not stop.

"_Five times_." Denise bawled at the hybrid. "Five times, you were caught on security camera, and twenty nine civilians reported seeing a UFO from the Brooklyn Bridge! Are you utterly insane?" She has been pacing back and forth, and Sec and I have watched her, like spectators at a tennis match. I am relieved when she sits down heavily behind her desk.

"We already have the FBI asking us questions, and before we know it U.N.I.T is going to be breathing down our necks again. They don't think we can be trusted. You are one of the most dangerous life form on this planet. You do know that if they think we've been letting you skulk around the city like a stray cat, they'll take you away and lock you some place where you'll never see the sunlight again. So _why,_ just why, are you doing this to us Sec?"

Honestly, I wanted to know the same thing. Sec, the humanoid creature to whom Denise was directing her anger, was given almost limitless amounts of freedom and it was in my best interests that he was.

I was paid for him to be free.

Free, but not independent.

Bathed in the unnatural light of the office, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was. It had a chilling effect, which juxtaposed the unseasonable heat of the world on the surface. I disliked Denise's taste in décor. The white tiles on the floor, the concrete panels that made up the walls, the chrome of the desk and grey-trim of the furniture was cold, uncomfortably modern. The worst part was that an increasingly large amount of my time was being spent inside that room. Sec was getting himself into a lot of trouble. It was almost on a daily basis, and for some bizarre reason, the woman who now stood behind the sweeping, stainless steel desk thought it necessary that I should also be present for every lecture. Who did she take me for? The mother of this monstrosity? I had certainly hoped not. If so, it would have raised a lot of unwelcome questions.

Leaning against the smooth grey wall, arms folded across my chest, I noticed how out of place the hybrid looked in the room. The vivid, fleshy pink of his skin stood out from the grey of the interior. He was like a cadaver, stripped of its hide and laid bare to be examined in a chilly morgue. Which was probably the least accurate description I could have given of him.

In appearance, he was the unholy off-spring of a human and a mollusc. Or more accurately, he looked as if the mollusc in question had flayed the man, and stretched its own clinging hide over bone and muscle, mutilating the body further in the process. The skin was a mottled brown, and warped, as if it had been burned. The skull, for some obscene reason, barely existed at all and instead served only to cage in the fleshy whorls of his brain. Curling like mandibles from the sides of its head were long worm-like tentacles, which were never still. The single eye was positioned in the centre of its face, and now watched the figure behind the desk, narrowing, as it lifted a nail-less hand to its mouth.

"Why?" Denise repeated.

For a moment, the creature remained still, and then he raised his shoulders and shrugged.

"I doubt I caused any actual harm." It told her innocently. "I thought that if I explored the city by night, I could go unnoticed."

"At night." Denise snorted. "But you weren't out at night, were you? Those onlookers saw you at sunrise, that's daybreak. _And _you were flying. What did I tell you about the flying?"

"Elevating." The hybrid interjected, yawning. "The technical term for a Dalek flying is Elevating."

"Elevating, flying, paragliding; I don't give a shit what you call it. I'm amazed the military hasn't been called." Denise was now massaging her temples. This caused strands of her greying ash-blonde hair to come loose from her usually meticulous pony-tail. "Where do you think you are? Anywhere else, almost anywhere else in the world, this could be tolerated. But this is New York. Nothing flies over New York. If they do shoot you down, you know what, I'm beyond caring. You'd fucking well deserve it."

I managed to catch the hybrid's eye, he returned my gaze with a mild look of awe. Denise, usually so impassive, rarely cursed. She was really mad this time. Her argument was very plausible however.

Denise sank heavily into her leather office chair, which creaked loudly a she did so.

"I don't know what to do with you. I really don't."

The hybrid and I made no reply. I had not been in a situation like this since high school. I knew what it meant, when a teacher said "I don't know what to do with you". It meant they were giving up. It was a phrase carefully designed to make the hearer feel shame, seeing the weariness of the speaker.

In the cleanliness of the office, which was so square, had such a low ceiling, Denise Ullswater herself was beginning not to suit it. This was a woman who had won a Nobel Prize in the nineties for engineering, who was a pioneer in all sciences, and would stop at nothing to get the desired result. At the present she was the head of a top secret underground science facility, with armed guards positioned at the entrances.

This woman now had bags under her eyes. The agelessness that had made me doubt her humanity when I had first met her seemed to have gone. She had always been a large woman, but she had put on even more weight. Her steely grey eyes no longer looked steely, just tired. Her general aura of ice had thawed somewhat. If I had liked her, I would have been worried.

I did not like her, but at least I believed her.

At long last, I cleared my throat.

"So…I take it that tonight is off then?" I asked.

Sec straightened up, and for the first time, he seemed anxious.

Denise looked round, obviously having forgotten that I was in the room.

"What about tonight?"

"It's Thursday." Sec reminded her. He spoke as he always spoke in a strangely strained voice, dry and throaty, placing the intonation on the wrong syllables. It was like the voice of a man who had lived many years and had always known how to speak English, but had only just tried to actually talk. "Thursday is Sober Night."

Sober Night was a buzzword that we had come up with together. It barely suited what we actually did.

The chair creaked as Denise placed her ringed hands on the arms of her chair, moving as if stiff.

"Well, clearly I don't think Mister Sec deserves a Sober Night. He's had enough nights out as it is, just without my permission." She then added, "Perhaps you should become full time Eliza, then maybe he'd behave."

I thought back to the lonely darkness of night-shifts in my last job. I could handle it. Looking at the hybrid, who had now crossed one leg over the other, I gave him a small wink.

"I seriously doubt that anything I do will change any of that."

"May I remind you that we had a deal, Denise?" The hybrid cut in. "I work for you. You take my knowledge of technology, which is far more advanced than current human capabilities, and you use it for your experiments. You keep me here, underground, hidden from the world above, keep tabs on me, keep me contained. You examine me, you ask me questions about what I am, where I come from." He paused, and let out a cough that could have been a bitter laugh. His words brought a heavy feeling to my stomach. "You even want intelligence about my race. My long dead race. Possibly the most deadly force ever to exist. And given who I am, I do not want to part with that easily."

Denise listened, unsmiling, her arms folded on her desk, creating a barrier between herself and the creature that watched her from the other side of the room. All at once, his presence seemed to fill the room. Every harsh angle, every irregularity of his form, were suddenly emphasised. He had become so familiar to me, his silhouette, even his acrid scent despite the fact that I saw him like this less and less. But all at once, he appeared to be the alien he truly was. He had always looked repulsive, but rarely did he disgust me.

"So in return, you give me my freedom. You give me a degree of independence. You already provide me with a space to live in, away from the laboratories. I appreciate that, I hope you know that. But I still need to be free."

His nail-less hands were now linked under his knee. There was something uncannily human about the mannerism. "I know I break your boundaries, but I am not unreasonable, no?" He went on airily. "You cannot take my freedom away from me. That would be breaking our agreement, I think. If you do I may not be so…" The creature paused and looked straight into the woman's face.

"…compliant."

If Denise was intimidated, she did not show it. I was. Something cold, which I knew was nothing to do with the air conditioning, swept over me. It was a coldness of remembering things how they had been, how they could have been, and all at once my limbs felt like lead. Suddenly, I was afraid of that creature sitting on the clear plastic chair in the centre of the room. And when that creature was the one person whom you felt you could confide in, it was a very ugly sensation.

But now, it was Denise who leaned forward.

"Oh, you know that you cannot threaten me Sec. Yes, we do provide for you, and I am glad you recognise that." She answered coldly. "But we do it for a reason. And that reason is to stop you killing."

Silence.

What Denise had just said had visibly stung Sec. The air in that room, deep underground felt as if it had frozen, fossilised, and that the scene in front of me, of the human and the mutant glaring at each other would last until the end of time.

Suddenly, I found myself laughing.

"God, look at you both," I had felt invisible for two long. "What's wrong with you? Anybody would have thought you were debating the start of nuclear warfare! I think you need to get over yourselves. Both of you."

Sec and Denise had torn their eyes away from each other, like a pair of dogs who had been startled before a fight could begin. Sec blinked, and almost looked embarrassed. Denise, however, seemed to puff up with indignation.

"You have no authority to speak to me like that!" She snapped, and I saw her face flush red.

"I don't see why not." I answered coolly. "If he gets angry and tears your throat out, then I don't get paid."

"You know, there are a lot of people qualified to do your job Miss Birchwood."

I did not back down. She knew why she could not replace me.

"Actually, I believe I could be the only person qualified to take this job, Ms. Ullswater." I reminded her.

The hybrid looked from me to Denise as her lips tightened, turning into a thin white line on her face. He eyes seemed to bulge a little with fury. But then, she breathed out and the colour returned to her face.

"Your…your experience and unique…position does make you suitable for the placement, I will admit that." She told me reluctantly. "But may I ask you to hold your tongue in future. Sometimes I worry that you could be part of the threat. We do not pay you to take sides, Miss Birchwood." Her grey eyes seemed to bore into my head, as she added: "Especially not the wrong side."

The feeling of disgust crept back, as I nodded slowly, trying not to break eye contact.

Seemingly satisfied, Denise looked forward again, appearing to have made some sort of resolution.

"I have decided that you may both have your so-called Sober Night, if that is what you wish." She announced.

Sec and I looked at each other, with a looks of mingled relief and triumph. But Denise drew back our attention, holding up a hand.

"I want you to remember though, any more CCTV footage, any UFO reports, and I am going to have to take away privileges."

She nodded to the hybrid.

"Starting with putting your casing into storage."

Sec froze.

"My casing." He repeated, as if he had misheard.

"Yes." Denise smiled meanly, knowing that she had scored a point. "Your casing is one of the most priceless objects ever to pass through the doors of the Columbia Facility. I am sure our engineers would dearly love to study it. I do not think the Government will object if we share with them what we find."

It was a good threat.

"You cannot do that." Sec replied fiercely.

"I think you will find that we can, and we will. Take it away, and we eliminate the problem completely. No more flying, no more damage."

"I need my casing…" The hybrid seemed visibly weakened by the threat. "You know I do. Taking it away will compromise everything you have worked for."

"Oh, we'll let you have it while you're in the lab." Denise told him. "But only then. You cannot go outside without it. I think that is a good enough incentive to follow the rules, wouldn't you agree Eliza?"

I decided not to make a comment this time. Sec pushed himself slowly out of his chair, formulating another threat.

Suddenly, a ringtone sounded across the room. It came from the draw of the Bauhaus desk. Denise paused. Whatever she had been about to say had been cut short. Sec and I, now both standing, watched as she wrenched the draw open, fumbled irritably for the little device, and looked at the screen. The ringtone continued to emanate cheerfully about the room as Denise rolled her eyes in frustration. I was nonplussed. It was a personal call; all professional calls came from the land line. The fact that career driven, steely Denise had a family, let alone friends who would want to call her had never occurred to me.

"I need to take this call." She told us curtly, shooing us away with her free hand. She sounded urgent. "Both of you, out. And remember this conversation."

After exchanging looks of mild surprise, I pulled myself out of my slumped position against the wall, stooped to pick up my canvas rucksack from the floor, and followed the hybrid out of the heavy double doors of the office. Glancing back, before the doors closed behind me, I had enough time to see Denise Ullswater sit back, heavily in her leather chair, the cell phone pressed against her ear.

Sec was waiting for me in the silent corridor outside. He was a head taller than me, when he looked like this. I saw him this way, part human, less and less. I nodded to him, and swinging my bag onto my shoulders, I kept pace with him as we walked down the echoing passage.

From the corner of my eye, I looked at him. He certainly was an ugly specimen. He wore human clothing, a black cotton shirt with black office pants, and a pair of black leather boots. I rarely saw him wearing anything other than black. With mucus slowly seeping through your clothes throughout the day, it was probably the best colour to hide it. From his face, the only part of his anatomy visibly other than his hands, I noticed the usual things. How mottled his skin looked, the way the tentacles were draped, like organic dreadlocks, about his shoulders, each one segmented like a worm. I had never seen the rest of his humanoid body, thankfully. Not like this. I had seen him shirtless once, but it had been in a photo.

But I was beginning to notice something else, too. He looked exhausted. In the stark light of Denise's office I had not seen it, perhaps because she had been too busy talking. But now, the lid over his eye seemed to be drooping. His posture seemed to have dropped as well. Perhaps he was unwell.

At first, I made no comment on his appearance, as our footfall reverberated around the passage. I was still angry at him.

"Why did you do it?" I asked, keeping my voice calm. The blue eye flicked towards me, then looked forward.

"Do what?" He answered flatly.

"Keep provoking her like that?" I looked at his face. "There's no reason for it. If you wanted to go somewhere, you know, I'm up for all-nighters. You could have given me a call."

Sec made no answer. The air in the corridor was still. It was late afternoon, and even in the constant temperature of the labyrinth of laboratories in which we were now walking, a kind of lethargy had settled. Unsatisfied, I decided to press with my point.

"You heard what she said," I went on. "She said she would take you casing away. Or worse. Like she said, what if U.N.I.T or the CIA had you shipped out? They practically spoil you here. Why do you abuse that? There's no way in hell anything the Government would plan for you would be as tame. How do you think _I_ would feel?"

Sec was still staring at the floor as we turned the corner. A woman in lab attire, who I knew as Louisa in was standing in a doorway talking to a balding man dressed like wise. She looked wary, pausing midway through a sentence as she saw the hybrid, but flashed me a smile when she noticed I was with him. I nodded to her, and went back to my interrogation, marvelling that I had spent enough time here to know almost everybody by name.

"And did you see the way she looked? You're making her physically ill." I went on, although I knew now that Sec was barely in a fit state either. "You can be such an asshole! Sometimes, I wonder if you're not all Dalek."

Sec appeared to be hearing every word I was saying, but choosing not to answer. It was indescribably annoying. An all too familiar sensation, a dull throbbing the regions of my chest, was beginning to gain my attention. I raised my voice.

"Why the hell do you do it?" I demanded.

Sec raised his shoulders into a shrug. At last, a reaction.

"For the same reasons you do, I suppose." He answered mildly.

I faltered.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Sec smiled. He had a very small mouth, but it stretched, face creasing whenever he smiled, which was rare, and usually only when he was being smug.

"The way you reacted back in the office. You were quite aggressive, actually. It was very admirable."

I bit my lip in frustration.

"Okay. So whenever a woman is assertive or raises her voice, she is being aggressive. I take it back. You're a typical guy."

"Eliza, you told her that I was going to rip her throat out." Sec reminded me. "That is generally a rather aggressive thing to say. And you are forgetting that I am half Dalek. The Daleks were never sexist. We hated all other life forms equally."

"That's a consoling thought." I remarked sarcastically, as Sec let out a dry laugh. Then I asked, "So why do you keep goading her if you know that she could make your life a misery?"

We were walking towards the heavy doors of the elevator which filled the passage before us, square and imposing, just how everything tried to look in the Facility. Sec reached out for the call button with an eloquent gesture.

"Because I was born in a cage, Eliza." He told me. "I still live in a cage for most of the day. And I don't want to have to be trapped in a metaphorical cage either. You understand that more than anybody, right?"

With the sound of metal on metal the elevator doors slid open.

"Well, you can leave that cage whenever you want." I reminded him curtly, gesturing to him up and down. "I mean look at you now! Walking and talking like a normal person. Why not just embrace that more?"

"You know why." The hybrid said darkly. His shoulders were sloping more than ever. He looked visibly drained. "And besides, that is not the only reason. Secondly, I do not like being told what to do. I was born into a position of power. It is not in my nature to obey persons in a lesser position than me."

"Watch it." I warned him as we stepped into the box-like space. "Lesser position. We are all born and one day we're all going to be dead. Nobody is in a lesser position to anyone."

"I didn't mean you." Sec added smoothly. I tried not to smile. Daleks were crafty things. I knew all too well when he was trying to butter me up.

"And thirdly," Sec went on as I selected the button for _FLOOR -2 SECTOR F_, "because I have been learning how to fly."

The doors slid shut, sealing us both inside, as I looked at him sceptically.

"You already know how to fly. I saw you fly all the time in that casing of yours."

The hybrid leaned on one of the walls, as the cabin began its slow ascension. I had not imagined it. He really did look tired, as if he was sagging a little. His wrinkled face looked as if it had seen centuries drift past it, weathered and worn with experience. But despite all of this, now his blue eye shone with excitement.

"I could always elevate in my casing, yes. But I did not know _how_ to fly." He raised his hand, rubbing the back of his neck as he spoke, smiling as if struck by a fond memory. "Eliza, it has always been the dream of your kind to break away from the ground. If you could fly at will, would you not want to spend as much of your waking hours as you could, soaring through the air as if weightless?"

I took in his words, thinking how out of character it was for him to tell me this. It had never occurred to me that this particular function would ever have been used for anything other than necessity.

"I guess so." I admitted. "I've never really been one for heights though. I never knew that you were either."

"I went to the Brooklyn Bridge." He said, distantly. "I wanted to see the sun rise over the city. The colours; I wished I had opened my casing."

"So much for irrational human sentiment." I murmured under my breath. It sounded like a beautiful thing to do. It was romantic. It was cheesy. And yet I did not know a single person in New York who would not, even secretly, have wanted to be in that place.

Sec blinked, as if woken from a pleasant dream. Drawing his hand across his face, he once again looked tired, the moment of euphoria was over. I wondered momentarily if he was going to collapse.

"You look awful." I told him bluntly, voicing my concern at last. "Like, actually abnormally awful, rather than just the usual awful. You look ill."

Sec did not answer. He was used to my brutal honesty. But the drained silence was confirmation. The cabin jolted as the elevator arrived at our floor.

"It's because you're like this, isn't it?" I did not mean for the question to sound as anxious as it did. "The transformation is hurting you, isn't it? It's what's making you so tired."

The elevator doors cast a white light over us, and as it did the hybrid looked as decrepit as ever. He looked at me with an expression of bitter resolution.

"The researches have concluded that I need to practice transforming more often. It will become less difficult if I do."

"Good." I nodded. "That's just as I said. Spending more time outside of your cage. Just what you need. But I think you should take a break now, okay?"

I stepped briskly out of the elevator, but glanced behind me when Sec did not follow. He lagged behind, as if afraid of coming into the light.

"As I told you, sometimes, I am not sure I want to leave my casing." He murmured.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Come on. I don't think I have ever met anybody who contradicts themselves as much as you do." Moments ago, he had expressed how much he hated being trapped. Now what was the problem?

Sec raised his eye to meet mine, and his mouth twitched. That single eye, in that wrinkled, tentacled face. He was the Cyclops and Medusa at the same time. Slowly I nodded. I knew where he was coming from. The pain in my chest was suddenly more than physical, seeing this creature, my friend, looking so insecure.

"I understand." I told him, truthfully too. "Neither would I."

Sec seemed consoled, and nodded in return.

We were now stood in an enormous room, which was functionally square with a towering ceiling. Everything was built out of the same characteristic concrete used in the rest of the facility. Ahead of us, a glass security booth peered at us, and next to it was a ten metre high set of warehouse doors, the kind that retracted into the ceiling. They were stained with grease and scratched. To the left of the window was a smaller door for regular access. There was nobody on duty (which despite the high security status of the facility, was not unusual), so I hit the green button besides the smaller door, and we stepped through.

Sec fumbled for the light switch, while I peered into the cavernous space beyond. It really was like a cave. It stretched on too far, almost as if the ceiling, as high as it was, was not high enough, and therefore could only have occurred naturally, as any architectural feat would have collapsed under its own weight.

From behind me there was a click, and with an echoing boom, the enormous lights blasted into life, line by line, lighting the cavern that was the hold.

The hold seemed under filled. Enormous crates were piled like an industrial game of Tetris against the walls, but only at the end closest to us. They were made of corrugated metal, and wood, and stamped with numbers and letters that made no sense. I dared not ask what was in most of them.

Larger shapes, covered by tarpaulins sat further away from us. I took them to be failed machines, or vehicles, although honestly I had no idea, and nobody had the grace to tell me. As large as they were, they barely filled the agoraphobic space.

But the object that sat a few metres from where we had entered I recognised all too well. I knew it was the most expensive, most dangerous, and also the most sought after object in the hold. I prided myself on knowing way more than that.

It resembled something that was part way between a small black tank and a very large pepper pot, constructed out of black metal and dotted with grey rivets. The top of it was domed, like a gun turret, and from it protruded a metal stalk that ended in a black lens. Below this was a grill, and below that was a panelled section, from which a telescopic devise that looked too much like a sink plunger to initially be taken seriously rested. It was wider at the bottom, its fenders fanning out into a skirt like section, and this was lined with columns of small domes. It had a rugged, military design, as if it had been designed to fight. It was half a head taller than me. Something about its dimensions, even without my life time of experience with the machine, suggested that it could move. It was dormant, waiting, sleeping, empty.

Sec stepped past me and walked over to the curious object impatiently.

"I think I am going to need this." He told me, sounding relieved, as he placed a hand on the domed head of the machine. From deep inside the dormant shell, there came a clicking sound, followed by a whirring.

"You look like you do."

The hybrid stepped back, and the machine burst open, like a large, brutalist flower, the panels on the bottom most and widest section peeling back, the grid under its dome swinging open. It happened so smoothly, bringing an organic element to an object that could not have looked less so.

And then there came the snapping sound. It was a sound like somebody cracking their knuckles, only much louder. I averted my gaze from Sec, out of politeness, knowing what I would see if my gaze happened to stray in his direction. He was changing.

Sec's form as the hybrid was not stable. It was his truest form, a creature simultaneously human and alien, and once, many years before I had met him, it was his only form. But Time had changed that. It had twisted him, made him weak and small, as he was before the hybridisation. It had been possible, they had discovered, to prompt his body to adopt the humanoid form once more, but it took a lot of energy. No wonder he had looked so exhausted, so old, so much more hideous.

I stood for a minute, as the shrinking of bones and flesh went on beside me, pretending to show particular interest in the opposite wall. No verbal sound came from the hybrid, which I never understood. It must have been agonising. His condition was known as temporal scarring. Technically it could have happened to anyone. I imagined, with an ordinary man, a Benjamin Button style abomination would have been the result. A child perhaps, with the weathered face of a fifty year old. Or a twenty-five year old woman with the burn scars she would only achieve after a fire in a car crash nine years into the future. That was how I tried to make sense of it.

Sensing that the transformation was over, I looked back at the spot where the hybrid had stood, only to see what looked like a rare mutant squid, his incredibly long tentacles spreading out across the floor like giant earthworms. He was trying, with as much dignity as possible, to pull himself out of the tangled bundle of clothing that he no longer needed.

"Done?" I asked politely. The creature started.

"WHY ARE YOU LOOKING?" A grating, staccato voice broke out across the room. It sounded entirely mechanised, and it was coming from the black machine.

"Need any help?" I continued, as the writhing creature tried to wriggle out of the black office pants.

"NO." The machine barked indignantly, for the creature that was Sec. And then it added. "FUCK YOU."

The change often brought a sudden spike in bad language.

"No need for that. Why do you get so grouchy whenever you do this?"

"IT IS A TIRING BUSINESS. AND I GET HORMONAL." The machine growled. "I HAVE A SURPLUS OF CHEMICALS IN MY BLOODSTREAM WHICH HAVE YET TO FILTER OUT."

The creature on the floor flashed me a boggy look, with the same single eye of the hybrid that had stood there moments before. He no longer had a mouth, and the features had shifted, warped. It was now difficult to imagine that he had ever looked any different. It was not embarrassing to look at because nothing I saw was particularly awkward, although Sec seemed to think so.

I stooped to pick up the clothes, as with practiced grace the creature hauled itself into the machine. And as it did so, the machine came alive. The broad, torch-like stalk that protruded from its domed head flickered, and a round blue light began to glow from its end. I folded the incredibly slimy clothes, as Sec positioned himself comfortably on a rounded ledge in the heart of the machine, draping his long tentacles so that they mingled with the numerous wires and cables which fed into the complex banks of computers and engines. The interior had obviously been cleaned of late. It no longer smelt as stale as it had when I had first seen it open.

I knelt, placing the bundle of clothes and the heavy black shoes under where Sec was sitting. He often needed them later. The creature, now unable to make any articulate sound, purred in thanks. He had apparently calmed down a little.

"I PITY YOU ELIZA." He told me. "YOU DO ALL OF THIS FOR ME. DO I DISGUST YOU? DO YOU FIND IT DIFFICULT?"

I shrugged.

"My Granny became really sick before she died." I said airily. "It wasn't very pleasant. My Grandpa and my Mom had to clean up for her. That was hard. She was apologising at first, but then she stopped talking after a while. I was too young to remember, but I was told about it."

I looked the creature in the eye, as the casing, with a mechanical hiss, began to close around it, sealing it inside like an oyster within its shell.

"I think I have it easier than that. I do this out of choice, remember. Nobody was paying for them. It's so much harder than when you love someone."

I never understood why I said some of the things I did to Sec. They were things I never told to anybody else. I guess it was because I thought he would not care, or because I did not expect him to understand. The irony was, he almost always did. Now, the glowing blue eye stalk of the machine, the now the eye for the creature inside, was focused on my face, wide and round. It almost looked surprised.

"I DID NOT KNOW THAT." He told me in his crackling voice.

"No reason why you should have. I didn't tell you."

I stepped away from the shell, which, now closed, began to drift forward with a mechanical whine. That was how I had begun to see it; a shell. It was like the home typical of an invertebrate, a creature that were too soft or too weak to survive without one. It was like a snail or a hermit crab. It was necessary for survival. The difference was that this one just happened to be made of metal.

But, the way I figured, a snail without its shell is only a slug. Sec, without his shell, whether he was octopoid and small or humanoid, was just "the Hybrid".

Sec, with the addition of his shell, was a creature that was collectively known as a Dalek.

The Dalek followed me as I walked back towards the door of the hold. It glided along, without wheels, without actually making contact with the ground. Walking out before it, and throwing the hold into darkness once more, I held the door for it, and it glided past like a small specialised military vehicle. I had become accustomed to the sound it made, to being aware of it, just behind me, beside me, a few paces ahead, its impressive shape always present, solid, familiar.

"Is that better?" I asked as I called the elevator.

My now metallic companion swivelled his domed head to look in my direction.

"SO MUCH BETTER. YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE IT. YOU HUMANS DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE MISSING."

We piled into the elevator, Sec now taking up a lot more space. The interior reverberated whenever he spoke.

"I think I'll stick to my legs, thank you. I take hot baths."

The elevator rose. It was designed to carry heavy goods, and there was easily enough room for the Dalek and me. I was glad that nobody else in the Facility had tried to stop us. There was this one guy who insisted on being called by his last name, Heinkel. He seemed to make it his task in life to tail Sec while underground. He was only nineteen; one of those genius kids who you only ever heard about on documentaries, and yet he was dumb enough to wear a surname that made him sound like a member of the S.S. I suppose he thought it was impressive. And sometimes, in the presence of the Dalek in particular, it was pretty obvious who he was trying to impress. I am glad to say it did not work.

When the elevator doors rolled open once more, we were no longer in the concrete labyrinth that lay below the ground.

We were in a reception, with polished black tile floors, and yet another security booth to our right, and a pair of more ordinary double doors straight ahead. The air felt warmer, somewhat heavier up here. The room was large, new, the walls polished white, and almost as clinically clean as the floors below. Behind a pane of bullet-proof glass, the guard, who I knew as Rex, minimised his game of Mahjong and turned to peer at us as we came through.

"Sober night again?" He asked in his deep, heavy voice. Sweat glistened on his dark forehead between the plough lines of his hair, and his eyes wondered warily to the Dalek. I nodded.

"Sure is. I don't think we'll be coming back through this was tonight."

Rex shook his head, sitting back in his seat.

"I think you're crazy." He addressed me, ignoring Sec. "That Denise woman is out of her mind. Must be all them chemicals you guys inhale down there."

Sec was watching Rex with a steady gaze. To anyone else it would have been impossible to tell how he was feeling. I was able to make an educated guess however, and I guessed he was mildly pissed off.

Still shaking his head, Rex pressed a round green button, and automatically, the heavy set double doors swung inwards. Beyond them, I could see daylight.

"You watch yourselves." Rex called after us, as we stepped out Security and into a different world.

It did not take us long to walk out of Pupin Hall, and into the warmth of the afternoon sun. The air was thick with heat and dust from a nearby construction work. The stench that had filled the city over a month ago had still not cleared, and although the majority of us had become used to it, it became more noticeable after being in the air conditioned interior below. The sky was a hazy blue, the kind of blue hot enough to burn. It had been like this all day, and the day before, and the week before that. All at once, I was shrugging off my back pack, delving inside for a bottle of Evian. Sec, safe inside his casing, glided beside me, untouched by the sun's criminal rays.

"REX DOES NOT LIKE ME MUCH." He said dryly, turning his dome to look wistfully at the handsome red brick block behind us. Having drunk my fill, I screwed the cap back on the bottle, my fingers suddenly clammy.

"I don't think he likes me much either. But I don't take it personally." I really didn't. The security guard had a point, and it would have been pointless to deny it.

We walked out into the sunbathed quad of the university campus. The grand white pillars of the student hall, and the Low Library beyond that stood out against the dry, browning rectangles of grass that stretched between them. The sun made the colours, the reds and the greens of the oaks, vivid and now glowed as the light slowly began to fade. It was almost empty. Students travelled slowly, in their pairs or groups, the temperature and afternoon lull obviously having its affect. They drifted past, and the familiar sensation of curious, sometimes frightened eyes settling on me, and then the Dalek who was now meandering cheerfully across the paving slabs behind me, came to my attention. A boy and a girl, one blond, the other wearing a chequered shirt, fell into silence as Sec nearly bumped into them. As we walked on, I heard them whisper and then laugh nervously as we moved on. The Dalek did not draw as much attention as I thought he ought to have. It was unsurprising. Stranger things had been seen in this city of late.

I had been at Columbia University for almost a year. It was a year that I had long anticipated. My dream, to study law, to put to use the tangle of grey matter that had been put in my head was finally being put to use.

It had realised long ago, however, that this was not my dream.

I looked up. I scanned the familiar skyline of the red brick buildings that surrounded the quad, their amiable windows gleaming in the light, and realised how detached I felt from it all. The classical columns of the hall that towered to my left, were real, but were not meant for me. Somehow, as I watched my fellow undergraduates lying on the lawns, care free, youthful, I realised that I could not talk to them. Not normally. Not on a regular, human level. And then, my gaze was inevitably drawn back to the heavy, alien machine that drifted past the lawns and the buildings, and knew why this was not so.

My normal life disappeared forever on the rainy night last summer, when I picked that small, tentacled creature out of a bloodied, sodden pile of clothing, and took it into my apartment rather than let it die of pneumonia.

Or perhaps it ended before that.

Perhaps, it ended the moment that a demon, with teeth like knives, and a body that seemed to be made of liquid night slashed at my neck, and tore the ligaments in the shoulder of my colleague.

Either way, it did not matter. Either way, it was because of Sec.

Resentment slid dangerously down my throat as my sneakered feet steeped smoothly on the path. I shouldn't have felt resentful. I was not as if I had not put myself in for this. I had chosen this life, the life of secrets and surrealism. I had chosen not to forget the events of the previous summer.

How could I have? I wanted to, so badly, but it was part of me now.

Attending CU, at least, could have been easier, could have been something normal. I could have missed deadlines, become buried under articles in the libraries, my biggest problem being the panic of exam revision and the hangovers on a Sunday morning. It could have been no more than a place where scholars argued, and academics learned, and debates and protests were held and research, controversial by a mundane standard, could be unearthed.

Apparently not.

I knew about the Facility now too. The top secret, high security network of laboratories and archives that lay deep beneath the campus. Columbia University's history of splitting atoms and the Manhattan Project was not over. It was far from it. It had only just begun.

I had sworn to secrecy. I had signed my contract with a devil, not the one with red horns, not even the black metal one who I was paid to tail, but the devil in the white coat. Like any transaction of the soul, there was no going back.

I was paid to be the friend of the creature that killed people.

And, because I could not tell anybody, not even my closest family, he was the only friend I had.

"YOUR ENDORPHIN LEVELS ARE LOW." Sec remarked. He spoke so suddenly that I was shaken out of my brooding with a jolt.

"My what, now?"

Sec stared straight ahead, no longer slaloming, but sliding shrewdly across the ground with an air of importance.

"ENDORPHIN LEVELS. YOU ARE UNHAPPY."

Secretly, I was impressed. This thing was at least becoming emotionally intelligent. Most people I knew, however, would have been able to tell just by looking at my face.

"Can you maybe not scan my chemical make-up and blood hormone levels when I'm not looking? It's kind of creepy."

"I CANNOT HELP IT." The metallic voice answered back with a note of innocence. "IT IS A GIFT AND A CURSE; THIS SIXTH SENSE OF MINE."

"I thought you used it to kill people." I reminded him. I saw the Dalek twitch from the corner of my eye.

"WELL, YES," He drifted away from me indignantly, "AMONG OTHER THINGS. AND DENISE GIVES ME BROWNIE POINTS FOR RECOGNISING FEELINGS."

"Have a cookie on me." I murmured, pushing my now clinging fringe away from my forehead.

"IT HAD JUST OCCURRED TO ME THOUGH," Sec went on, "THAT WE DO NOT HAVE ANY PLANS FOR SOBER NIGHT."

We had almost left the campus, and I hesitated.

"You're right, we don't do we. Well, it's your night out. What do you want to do, then?"

Sec did not answer right away.

"I THOUGHT…PERHAPS YOU COULD CHOOSE."

I stopped, and looked at the Dalek, who looked back at me seriously.

"Really, me?"

"REALLY. YOU."

We had never actually done anything particular on these obscure evening outings. I had begun to see them as a kind of parole. But what could we do? It was not as if we could simply walk into a bar, order a drink and get smashed out of our skulls. Denise would not have approved. And how this creature, the unintentional reason for my isolation would be able to pull it off was a mystery to me. It wasn't going to happen.

Or was it?

Suddenly, I felt a very Sec-like feeling of rebellion. All at once I found myself smiling.

"Well, okay then." I began, as wicked machinations began to form in my mind. "I have a couple of ideas."

Sec seemed pleased, even relieved.

"EXCELLENT. THEN WHAT IS THE PLAN?"

"The plan is," I began walking again, the heat only a minor setback, and glanced over my shoulder as the Dalek eagerly began to follow. "For a start, we're going to have to ditch the _sober_ part, if you get my drift."

I walked on as Sec slowed. The leaves overhead decorated his shell with dappled sunlight.

"AM I GOING TO LIKE THIS PLAN?" He asked, and I was satisfied to hear a tiny pang of nervousness in his voice.

"Trust me. By one a.m. tomorrow you're not going to care."


	3. Chapter Two: The Interregnum

Chapter Two: The Interregnum

SEC: Just south of the Bronx, to the east of Manhattan, there sits a pair of small islands that are choked with trees and are always green. The dilapidated remains of mankind still stand there, slowly crumbling under ivy and branches, the damp seeping into the bricks and eating away at them. The island had been perfect for its isolation. It had once been the sight of an isolation unit for patients with small pox, then Tuberculosis, then a site for accommodating war veterans and after that a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts. Then, one day, the staff, the inmates and the equipment were pulled from the hospital, person by person, bit by bit, leaving the empty husk of a once foreboding building. The island was put up for sale during the seventies, and when no buyer showed up, it was forgotten.

It was perfect.

It was one of the five of my regular squatting locations, and by far my favourite.

I could have lived on that island at all times if I had wanted to, totally alone, hidden by the trees, drifting through the shell of the dead hospital like a black metal spectre. The ruins were the reason for the island's abandonment. The broken, yawning windows were just the right size to let in the sounds of the city, and just frightening enough to intimidate the occasional explorer. The old elevator shaft, now devoid of an elevator, was perfect for traveling up and down, should I have tired of trying to navigate the twisting stairwells.

It was full of little, trinkets, funny little things that humans saw the necessity to use, but Daleks did not. These were curiosities such as the archaic x-ray machine that stood rusting on the ground floor, the unrecognisable ancestor of the contemporary device, with the arms of the scanner hanging like implements of torture above it. There was the rotting auditorium, its rows of plastic chairs yellowing and collapsing, swathed in the dry mould of leaves. There was the carpet of books covering the floor of the Boy's Dormitory, flung to the floor as if by a supernatural force, their pages fluttering in the breeze like lethargic wings. The insulation peeled from the walls of the tuberculosis building, the urinals in the old bathrooms stood under broken tiles, their mechanisms torn out and leaving gaping holes next to them. The island had a relatively short, but relatively unsavoury history. When it had been a hospital, the inmates were dragged from the streets of the city against their will, its doors closing after the death of Typhoid Mary in the thirties. Staff corruption in the fifties resulted in its closure once more, until, mankind found it best to leave alone the forsaken spot forever.

Soon, the humans believed the island to be haunted. It was.

The resident ghost took the full advantage of this. He would sweep, in almost complete silence over the thick covering of foliage that lay like a velvet throw over the forest floor. He would perch above the chimneys of the work house and watch the lights of Manhattan blink into life every evening, and although he could not see the colours, he appreciated the glow of energy, when he himself was lonely. In the heart of the tuberculosis building, he found a room with a sound view of the trees and dragged in a paraffin burner, a thermos flask, a set of empty boxes in which to smuggle food, and books which were not speckled with mould, and having no hands with which to turn the pages, he leaned out of his casing and dotted them with slime.

Yes. I had liked being a ghost a lot. If I spent time in the city, I would leave in the early morning, and fly back by nightfall across the water. It did not matter if people saw me back then. I was only a ghost. I was little more than a strange machine, just like the rotting contraptions that sat on the little island, I was little more than a trinket.

Then one winters evening, the humans came to the island. After that everything changed. It was a bitterly cold evening. I had been sat, with my casing open and a hurricane lamp burning beside me, halfway through an Agatha Christie novel and a box of _Ritz_ crackers. I had enjoyed those evenings.

Suddenly, dancing and blinking through the darkness of the trees, there was the movement of torchlight. I paused, listening, scanning. I counted heartbeats. Weapons. This was no late night thrill tour. These humans whoever they were, wanted something, and they were heading straight for the old hospital. Quickly, I lifted the hurricane lamp by a tendril and extinguished it, then slid back into my casing. It was too late. They would have seen the light already. Besides, they knew something was alive on the island. Bullets would not penetrate my armour, but my deflector shield was faulty, my weapons temperamental due to years of inactivity. It was obvious that they had some idea of what they were dealing with. Why else would they have brought machine guns?

It had been my plan to play out an elaborate game of stealth. So I moved carefully, silently avoiding the men by waiting in shadows, then attics, at the bottom of the elevators shaft. All the while they trudged through the creaking hallways with heavy boots, weighted down by their bullet-proof jackets and whispering commands to one another. An hour, two hours swept past, and it seemed that I was winning. They had not found me, and waiting under staircases, melting into the pitch darkness at the end of a passage, I heard the doubt seeping into their speech.

"_You don't think it's here?_"

"_Of course it was. You saw the light, didn't you?_"

"_Maybe it really was a ghost."_

"_No, keep looking. That's what we said about the Cybermen, and look where that got us._"

"_But Cybermen can't fly, can they? How did it get to the island without a boat?_"

"_Hey, it wasn't just Cybermen trashing London last month. Keep it down._"

Being compared to something as inferior as a Cyberman was highly amusing, and I tried very hard not to laugh. I had been sitting right in front of their eyes for almost thirty years, and only now were they interested.

Eventually, the men and women filtered out of the building, and revelling in their stupidity I was foolish enough to believe that it was over. That was, until, I noticed that they had not left. They had congregated just outside of the building, and were standing well back.

Without a sense of smell, it was my scanners that picked up the thickening smoke. They had lit a fire in the foundations of the building. They were driving me out with flames.

My armour was fire proof, but the building, already structurally unsound would have collapsed and buried me if I did not escape, crushing me inside my casing like tinned tuna. Trying not to panic, I swept through the building, my air filters working desperately to cleanse the darkening air, and finding a rear window I burst out into the night, hovering above the flames.

Almost instantly, there was an eruption of gunfire. I tried to ignore it, keep going, reach the water, but I had severely underestimated the humans.

Suddenly, a long cable, not unlike a harpax, flew through the air and attached itself to my casing, and seconds later there was a vicious flash, like lightning. Before I had even registered what had happened I crashed down to the ground. My machinery was going haywire. I could not open my casing, and trapped inside it, in total darkness, I lost consciousness.

Even a year later I still thought that they were lucky, that they had not expected a Dalek. They had known I was in New York City all along, but until that year I had not been seen as dangerous, had not been recognised for what I truly was. I remember, before my vision short-circuited, seeing the humans step back, their faces set with fear and amazement.

They had won, either way. I was hauled into a crate, loaded onto the boat disguised as a trawler that had waited beside the ruined jetty, and shipped away to the Columbia Facility that waited under Manhattan.

There is little point going into details about what happened next. The things that the humans did to me in those first few months could not exactly be forgiven, let alone forgotten. Such as their attempts to rouse me from my shell. Denise. The picana incident. The loss of mutual trust. The use of the Rift. The re-hybridisation procedure. Everything that followed that, the Slyther, Skaro and the death of Patrick Thayer. Eliza, and with Eliza, life. Now all the events had settled and had become history. A new kind of normalcy had been established.

Sometimes though, curiosity took hold of me. Whenever it did, and Denise had the good grace to be busy with other things, I would return to lonely North Brother Island. There was something addictive about the isolation, the hissing of the leaves when caught by the wind. I would glide through the silent skeleton of the tuberculosis building, the flames long dampened out, my copy of _They Do It with Mirrors_ lying open and speckled with mildew in the room on the third floor. I came there less and less, for although I had enjoyed the sanctuary that I had once found in that place, I now saw it for what it truly was, a place of suffering, and sadness that I was now too human to ignore. I had a home on the mainland. The Facility had purchased the second floor of an old warehouse for my use, five minutes away from the campus. Now that I no longer had to return there, it was no longer needed.

The last time I went there was the Tuesday before I had found the writing on the wall of the subway tunnel. It was a warm, starry evening, the leaves and the undergrowth were wet with dew, and I elevated to the top of the chimney of the old work house and gazed once more at the glowing city.

I pondered what had happened, the way they had come for me that night, when for years I had been left alone.

Something had changed.

I had opened my casing, stared up into the ether, and was just able to make out the stars from the urban glow. They had always been full to me, full of life, infinite life. Life that I only now saw as undefeatable. Now, humanity too was looking up, not wondering, but knowing, that there was life out there. They were afraid.

It had happened.

The interregnum was over.

The interregnum. What did it mean? A cease fire? A period of change? No, it meant a pause. It meant a time when fear of the undeniable "other" did not reign over Earth. It meant a moment of time when attitudes and ideas changed. They would become sometimes primeval, an experiment or the testing ground of a new philosophy. Often, it was something old.

The interregnum was the word I gave to the sixteen years in which humanity forgot that the stars were full of life. The Cybermen were ghosts. Nobody thought of aliens, not at first. Even as far back as 2006, people did not want to believe it was _really_ a space ship had crashed into the clock tower at the British Houses of Parliament. _I_ was a ghost and a gimmick that wandered around Central Park in the summer and was randomly given money by strangers. Somehow, it was easier to say "a figure swathed in black, with a single eye, glowing with malice" than "a robot, most probably an alien".

The Cybermen were the turning point. Once humans started dying, it could no longer be ignored. Suddenly, I was no longer a gimmick, but a danger, and so they came after me.

Now I spent my days in the lab, helping where I could. More than anything I watched, as Denise and Heinkel tore their hair out over the hundreds of new alien specimens that came through the doors of the Facility almost on a weekly basis. Every time, they would ask for my expertise. I recognised nearly every single one. All I had to do was ask myself the question; had we ever invaded that planet? How many of them had we killed.

It proved to be useful.

_That pill contains the DNA of the Adipose. Don't swallow it, whatever you do. _

_Those remains you found in Arizona? A cyborg, designed to fight wars in other worlds. And yes, he was alive and concious during the conversion._

_Humanoid lizard in Delaware? Probably a Silurian. No, not from Mars, a bit closer to home._

The month before I had found the writing. That was fun.

One bright and sunny afternoon, every car on Earth suddenly, unexpectedly, began to spew toxic gas. While most people panicked, I imagine that a lot of them were used to this kind of thing by now.

It did not take me long to explain that the Sontarins were responsible. Not my favourite opponent; a race comparable in appearance to a baked potato. Equally as intelligent to one too, in my opinion. They had no real agenda apart from fighting, and as a result they were particularly adept at it, and nothing else. Still, this meant that a war with the Sontarins could get messy. In the end, no missiles were fired, and so the gas remained.

Eliza, my partner in crime, informed me that she had spent those days playing on Xbox in her apartment, blocking the cracks under the doors with towels and surviving off canned pears. I told her that this did not seem so remarkable, because as a student this was all she ever did anyway. That comment earned me an assault from a ring binder.

As I had perched on the chimney on the leafy island that night, I remembered how once again, we were saved. We were always saved, every time.

This time, the sky was filled with fire. A monumental sheet of flame swept across the globe, spreading from England, over Europe and out across the continents, cleansing the atmosphere, harming no-one. It had been beautiful in a dangerous, terrifying sort of way. Burning over the skyscrapers, like and upside-down vision of hell, the river reflecting the flames and glowing golden.

I watched as the little scientists ran about the lab for weeks after that. It appeared that they had been as terrified of the resolution as they had been to the threat. _How did it happen? Where did the fire come from? Who knew how to do that?_

I knew who.

As sure as I knew that I was the first and the last of my kind, I knew who had saved us. He always did.

My old friend. Our greatest enemy. That nameless traveller, always there, rarely seen. I knew what I was willing to do in order to save him. I suppose that a sky full of fire was little more than proof that it would have been worth it.

The interregnum was over. The stars above me were alive once more. The aliens had returned, and along with them so had he.

If the Doctor was around, then all was not lost.

Although I knew from experience, that everything he touched would wither in flame eventually.


	4. Chapter Three: Sober Night

Chapter Three: Sober Night and Stolen Secrets

ELIZA:

Lewis Coleman had been sitting in the bar for a good two hours before we entered. He was alone, seated on one of the wooden chairs in the corner by a small round table. There was a nearly empty glass of coke at his elbow. He was resting his chin in his left hand and spinning a biro in his right, pondering the writing task he had set himself, his little dog-eared notebook lying open in front of him. He stared down at the page, wearing a new pair of reading glasses with flat brown rims.

Around him, the bar was alive. This was the kind of place that people with small jobs involving the arts or intellect came to relax on a Thursday, celebrate on a Friday, and to pass out on a Saturday. It was a small attractive place, on the chic side of shabby, and passed to the vintage side of old. It was certainly, however, considered alternative enough for its crowd.

The dark wood panels which lined the walls were nostalgically chipped. The furniture was thick set; plush velvet seats in booths worn by the acquaintance of so many butts through the decades. The patterned lamps that hung above the bar had a distinctively salvaged appearance, as if they had lain forgotten and cracked in an antique store for years until it had occurred to someone that they could look stylish in the right setting. The bar itself, a grand theatrical feature, had the distinctive art nouveau curves carved into the wood. A mirror multiplied the grand array of bottles, liquors and bar tabs that lined the shelves, transforming it into a shining cabaret of decadence. It was the sort of place which made on think of a different time, of flappers and speak-easies, of cigarette smoke and card games, but not without noticeable effort. It was a little fantasy world for those who wanted to taste it without going to the more seedy establishments.

Lewis came here often. There had been a point in his life when the more seedy establishments had indeed been his natural environment. It was a point in his life that he was determined to forget about and perhaps one day lose forever. He liked it here. Many times in the past few months he had come here with friends to laugh and drink and to act like a normal person, but many more times he had come here alone. A couple of times, however, in fact the first time, he had come to _Cassie's _to perform.

It was a Thursday. The enormous stage, a simple but dominating wooden platform, stood empty, an upright piano its only occupant.

On entering, Lewis had been sorely tempted to give her a try. In his mind, he liked to imagine an empty room, with only a piano and himself, where he could play, write and compose to his heart's content, with nobody to disturb him. It was a fairly innocent fantasy. A fairly bohemian one too. Lewis was never pretentious enough to call himself a bohemian, but he suspected that in his soul that this was truly what he was.

He found that on this night, he liked the crowd in the bar. He liked the way, in particular, that none of them were people he knew, the only exception being Sean the bar tender.

He liked the way that so many of them were young, fresh faced, not tired, gaunt or stoned as he was used to. The older folk tended to drink alone, in corners, keeping themselves to themselves, very much in the same way that he was.

Perhaps at heart he was an old soul as well as a bohemian. He did not know.

By nine o'clock, the bar was still fairly empty. The small amount of people who were present were very loud; a group of five cackling students, a young couple gently gnawing at each other's faces in one of the booths.

He did not notice, therefore when a black woman in a blue dress and a leather jacket pushed in from the dusky street, and crossed over to the bar, Sean looking up as she approached. Lewis kept staring at his page, as the black woman spoke quietly, persuasively to the bar tender, asking for a request, help for a friend who had difficulties opening doors, and managing stairs. Sean was smiling, nodding, and coming out from behind the door. Lewis did not notice as the young woman said, with the awkward speech of one trying to prepare her partner in speech for a shock, that her friend was rather unusual, and was not used to some of the customs of this country, and could sometimes be a little strange to encounter.

She followed Sean back to the doors, the kind with brass bars set at diagonals under the arched glass windows which were cluttered with event posters and flyers. Lewis chewed on the lid of his biro as Sean held open the door opposite the young woman, and did not notice as the bar tender appeared to freeze in his place.

It was only when the strange conical machine purred into the bar, (with all the smoothness of a tank trying to board a cruise liner without a gang plank) that Lewis looked up, shaken out of his thoughts by the familiar hum of an alien engine.

I cannot blame Lewis for not looking up as the black woman entered. Besides, he had not seen her for a year, and despite meaningful promises that the two would meet each other before then, life had gotten in the way and suddenly, both sides felt slightly awkward, a little embarrassed, at the idea of the others company. It had been too long. They didn't even have each other's numbers. Was the other even that interested? Did it even matter at all?

Besides, the young woman was not in her usual form that night, and she was beginning to regret it (I hope, dear reader, that you realise that I am writing about myself here).

She was wearing a blue dress for a start. She hardly ever wore dresses, especially short, silky, formal ones with fabric flowers sewn to the top of the bodice. But it had been hanging in her wardrobe untouched for months, and it had looked so good on her when she had tried it in the shop. To make the look more casual, she had pulled a leather jacket over her bare shoulders, and now was at the mercy of the oppressive heat. Having never been the sort to wear heels, she had pulled on a pair of shabby pumps, and now her feet were sore from walking.

The relief for her own, personal embarrassment, was that no matter what she looked like, or how she felt, the surrealistic presence of the enormous black Dalek drew all attention in the bar away from her, and the atmosphere entered a whole new level of strangeness.

For the first half an hour, Lewis had sat in the corner, and watched as the events played themselves out before him.

He had watched as Dalek Sec followed me, almost shyly, up to the bar, where I ordered a beer, and the Dalek announced in his awkwardly staccato tones, that he wanted a cosmopolitan.

Later Sec told me that this was because it was the only cocktail he knew, and he had wanted to sound sophisticated.

At first the other people in the bar were too surprised to know how to react. The young couple stopped kissing. The colourful group of friends fell silent, and in turn they threw curious, semi-amused glances at the machine at the bar.

Sec was well aware that he was being watched. At first, he did not like it. He kept panning his eye stalk to meet my eyes, as if wanting to know if we could leave, or to know that he was doing everything correctly. Soon our drinks arrived. I had sat on the bar stool, and watched with interest as he affixed his plunger to the rim of his glass, and the pink liquid within evaporated, twirling upwards and vanishing into the downturned cup.

After that he had begun to relax a little.

Nobody, except Lewis and I, had known what Sec was. If they had, they would have left the bar very quickly, or started screaming.

Instead, a woman with red streaks dyed into her hair had approached us, and asked me if she could take a picture of herself with the Dalek. I shrugged. Told her to ask him. Mystified, the woman had addressed the Dalek, and gasped with excitement as Sec had given her permission in his grating, rasping voice.

After that, I had watched as a small queue gathered began to form, everybody wanting photos of the Dalek. Sec, calmed by the alcohol, did not seem to mind. He became placid, almost friendly.

Jokily, a man with close set eyes in a blue suit asked if he could buy Sec and I drinks.

And so, something resembling a small party began to grow around us as, coaxed out of their shells, the young bright inhabitants of the bar began to swarm around the black machine. Sean the bar man had switched on the loud speaker, and we had shouted requests at him. They were, mostly, thankfully, jazz hits. The tastes of the places most frequent inhabitants did not let us down, did not tarnish the intended atmosphere of that stifling space. The sky outside the doorway began, slowly, to darken, and the lights of the city replaced the sun, and all the while the laughter and the chatter continued to grow.

It was one of those times when you exchange numbers with at least five different strangers with the inevitable promise of eternal friendship.

But, as I watched, and Sec sat within the action like a throbbing core of black metal, it became obvious that he was the real appeal here, not I.

I had set my limit to two drinks, but all of a sudden I found myself ordering a third. I sipped on it slowly, keeping half an eye on the Dalek, and marvelled at my own cruelty.

What had I done?

Sec, the hybrid, had many vices, and alcoholism had not been one of them. In a single night, it appeared, I had extinguished the only frail spark of innocence that had resided within that polycarbide shell.

Now, looking at him, surrounding by laughing, glass tipping humans, he could not have looked more out of place. Against the curvature of the organic, the anthropomorphic, he was an obscure piece of military art deco that had somehow stumbled into our world.

And, I mused darkly, he was not even that. I watched as the woman with the red dyed hair draped her arm around his grill, as if it were his shoulders, and wondered if she would have done that had she known that a creature of flesh and blood was spun, suspended by wires, tubes and tendons within the machine. Would she have, if Sec had been out of his casing, standing among us, as his gnarled humanoid self?

In his casing, Sec was a gimmick. A robot could be believed, could be accepted. He was curious to behold, only mildly threatening, but laughable, mismatched in a world full of people. But as the hybrid, as something breathing, it would become very obvious, very fast, that he was alien, wrong, threatening. His general appearance did not give him any merits in this area.

Why had I brought him here, to be jeered at like an attraction at a theme park?

I knew why.

It was because I was lonely.

What better way was there to get attention than to bring an extra-terrestrial creature into a bar in New York City?

It was like tying a bear to a stick and making it dance.

It was while I was sat away from the crowd and the drunken Dalek, that Lewis decided to make his presence known.

He had picked up his pen and his little note book, and had placed himself on the bar stool next to me.

"Well, you both seem to be getting on well." He remarked.

I swallowed my mouthful of drink too fast, the bubbles rising up my nose, and turned to look at him. It took me a few seconds to recognise him.

"…Lewis?"

A smile, thin, and on the cusp of being familiar, broke out across his face.

"Eliza Birchwood. The girl with the Dalek."

"Oh God, I didn't see you there. I'm so sorry. You should have come over earlier."

He shrugged his narrow shoulders, resting a large hand on the work top.

"I like my own company." He told me briskly.

There followed a pause, which would have been the inevitable awkward pause, had we not both been staring at Sec, who was bellowing, eye-stalk skyward, in a slightly slurred voice.

"I NEVER…I NEVER THOUGHT THAT CONSUMING A SHEMI TOXIC SHUBSTANCE…COULD BE SHO…ENJOYABLE…BUT THIS…THISH IS _WONDERFUL!_"

There came a cascade of intoxicated cackling. Lewis raised his eyebrows.

"Would you look at that? Even _his_ circuitry can be slowed. I'm beginning to understand why they passed the Prohibition."

"Well…" I tried to reason, remembering with a sense of forgotten responsibility that I was being paid to make sure he didn't do anything crazy, "he's having a good time. I don't think he's ever been out like this before."

"He hasn't." Lewis answered bluntly. "Not since the thirties."

I was taken aback by this.

Lewis Coleman knew Sec well. He was the only other person who wasn't a scientist who knew of him, knew what he was.

I was tempted to call the Dalek over, but he seemed to be busy, and besides, Lewis' manner seemed to suggest that he did not want to be noticed. Not just yet.

I wondered why.

It was clear however, that Lewis disapproved. He had a good reason to. Something bitter inside me wanted to fight back. Why shouldn't the Hybrid be allowed to have some fun? He had suffered enough.

And, less selflessly, I felt I had too.

I took a long sip of my drink, watching Sec out of the corner of my eye. He had now drove himself to a space in the centre of the floor and was proceeding to turn round in slow circles, while the crowd egged him on.

"It's been almost a year now." Lewis remarked. He was running his finger around the rim of his empty glass.

"I know it has."

"So how is he? How are you?"

I shrugged.

"You could ask him yourself, you know."

Lewis shook his head.

"He won't want to see me."

"Sure he will."

"Yeah, but…not now."

I watched him carefully. No wonder I had not recognised him. He looked different. In a good way, too.

His gingery-blond hair had been cropped short at the sides, tastefully, ending in a longer fringe. He was a thin man with a naturally pale complexion. But the sallow, sickly, translucence of his skin had gone. He looked healthy, fuller. He was growing a new beard. His clothes fitted him well, and no longer hung off his wiry frame. He wore a tasteful grey jacket with a blue shirt underneath, and a pair of jeans.

When I had first met him, there was no ignoring the fact that he had some kind of addiction. He had looked the part, and only a few days after I met him, he had been carted off by the police.

Now, although he looked inarguably more alive, I noticed the way that a slight tremor was in his hands.

I wanted to ask him how he was.

But I wasn't sure how I could begin.

"You…you're looking well." I began. It was a good start.

"You think so? Thank you."

"What are you doing here on your own?"

"Oh."

Lewis reached into his pocket and produced his small note book. "I like to come here to do my writing. You know; to work out lyrics."

He flicked through the little book, and I caught glimpses of his carefully written script. I raised an eyebrow, impressed.

"Nice. Going to write me a serenade?"

Lewis smiled, letting out a nasal laugh.

"Oooh, well, when I think of one, eh?"

He paused. During that moment, I wondered if he was completely joking. I looked forward, feeling myself blush.

"I wish I could write." I said. "It's just not my thing. I'm not a very creative person."

"Oh, it's not hard. It's quite fun."

"I think kickboxing is quite fun."

Lewis laughed.

"I've never tried it."

"You should. It keeps me fit. Gets rid of frustration."

Lewis said, "I like swimming."

"Mmmm, swimming is fun. I need to find a good pool."

"I usually go in the sea. We go as a band; Kate, her girlfriend, Mattias. Perhaps you could come along."

The offer was incredibly tempting. We fell into silence. It was nice, comfortable. But the moment ended as the purr of a Skarovian engine crawled up behind us, and Sec decided to make his presence known.

"ELIZA? YOU ARE NOT DRUNK YET. I DEMAND THAT YOU JOIN USH…OR DIE!"

Lewis and I reluctantly turned to meet the gaze of the Dalek's glowing blue eyestalk.

"AND TELL YOUR FRIEND THAT HE MUSHT COMPLY…" He turned his head to look at Lewis and stopped mid-sentence. I watched his lens dilate in recognition.

"OH. LEWIS. I DID NOT KNOW _YOU_ WERE HERE." Sec rasped, the mechanical slur having vanished from his voice.

Lewis smiled tightly, and responded by rapping him friendlily on his slats.

"Hey there blinky. It's been a while now."

The stiffness of Lewis' greeting was the natural response from anyone who was approached by the intimidating cyborg. I watched it, thinking there was something more to it. Lewis had been pleased, overjoyed in fact, to see the Dalek last September. Now, his response was noticeably strained.

What had changed?

I threw a sideways glance to the group of besotted drunkards, and notice that a bearded man in a beanie hat was filming us on his camera. I rolled my eyes. It wasn't just that he was wearing a hat in _that_ sweltering heat that annoyed me.

There was something not entirely friendly about the way that they were laughing.

Sec, and Lewis followed my gaze to the camera, the Dalek turning his dome in a swift movement. He drew a little closer to us.

"You having fun?" I asked him cheerily, but feeling I needed to check in. Lewis's tight smile faded. All at once he seemed concerned.

Sec paused.

"…YES. AFFIRMATIVE. I AM. THANK YOU."

One of the locals let out a cackle, and the Dalek didn't move.

"Oh, did you hear that? He said _affirmative_! Aww, he's so _adorable!_"

"This is a surprise." Lewis remarked. "I never imagined you out on the town."

I looked from one to the other. Sec slowly reversed.

"IT IS CERTAINLY AN INTERESTING EXPERIENSHE." He had begun to slur his words again.

"Hey, hey robot! Come back here! Do something else!" The guy with the hat and the camera shouted at him, grinning like a broad-mouthed idiot.

"You can stick with us if you like." Lewis cut in quickly, a hard note in his voice.

But Sec, looking a little at loss, drew away from us slowly, and headed a little reluctantly towards the crowd.

"Are you sure that was a good idea?" Lewis hissed, leaning close to me. His tone was completely different. "Are you insane?"

"What?" I asked

"Why did you take him here? He hates people! He gets nervous around large groups."

"It was a bit of fun, what is your problem?" I snapped back.

Lewis scowled, breathing out heavily through his nose. He was watching the Dalek over my shoulder, as if he was a thing that could at any moment explode.

And given the nature of the Dalek, this was a plausible concern.

"Why are you suddenly so upset? What's the matter?"

"Well, I don't really get it. Why do you hand around him all the time?" He asked. A note of exasperation was creeping into his voice. "Are you secretly in the CIA or something?"

"I would tell you, but I'd have to kill you." I retorted.

Lewis raised an eyebrow.

I downed the rest of my drink. I had had enough of the secrecy.

I had told nobody anything, and it was beginning to eat a hole in me.

Lewis would understand. He would get it. Besides, if it was about Sec, I felt, somehow, he had the right to know.

The first times I had encountered the Dalek face to face, had been when I was a little girl. I had thrown a tin can at the creature, ignorantly, seeing whether or not it would notice, and who had jumped down from the wall to shout at me? To scare the shit out of me with promises of imminent death? This man. Then a boy, now grown, almost a different person.

But he would know.

I sighed.

"Officially," I began, "he's supposed to be locked away. U.N.I.T has tags on him. There's a…a facility that has been conducting research, doing experiments on behalf of the government. They were keeping him under lock and key, but…"

"But?" Lewis was watching me severely.

"But, they couldn't hold him." I smiled, remembering the dark night when I had first encountered the real Sec, the hybrid, face to face. He had escaped, out in search of a demonic creature called the Slyther that he himself had accidentally unleashed onto the streets of Brooklyn. He had stolen his clothes from Heinkel's locker, he had told me later. The hybrid had been hopeless against it. Animals without skulls just weren't meant to exist.

"No, he kept escaping. So, they broke the rules and made a compromise. He can go out, with a guard, once a week, and in return, he does as he's told, he helps them with their work, and, well, he behaves himself. And they gave me the job to make sure he does that."

"Oh." Lewis nodded slowly. He already knew that I had quit my previous calling, becoming a cop. I had told him that last September. "I didn't know any of that. Jesus, it _has_ been a long time."

He sucked his lip, looking perplexed.

"So…so they put him away. What _kind_ of research did they conduct?"

"They, they didn't hurt him, not once they knew he was harmless. Mostly." There was no point holding any of this back. "At first it was the usual; you know, finding out what he was, where he was from. But then, they did a DNA test, and they discovered that he was half human…"

Lewis's eyes were wide.

"So it's true." He breathed, his voice so quiet, he was almost whispering.

I nodded.

"Yeah. It is. And they managed to prove it."

"Prove it?"

I glanced furtively over to the subject of our conversation, who had drifted over to the corner of the room with the stage. Everyone else had followed him, coaxing him to try and elevate onto it. I looked back at Lewis, looking right into his hazel eyes.

"Lewis, he _changes_. The giant pepper pot; there's something alive in there."

"Yeah, I know that already-"

"No, but that little octopus thing; it stretches itself out. It becomes a hybrid. Part Dalek, and…"

"Part human." Lewis finished. I bit my lip.

Sitting on his stool, facing me with his legs open, his arms resting at his sides, my companion looked slowly in the Dalek's direction, from which peals of laughter were rising.

"God." He whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. "How does he change?"

"It's a bit like…" I tried to find a simile, "a werewolf. Only a lot gooier."

"Does it hurt him?"

I thought about the slimy humanoid, hunched with pain and wincing, earlier that day.

"I think it does. Quite a bit."

"They shouldn't have done that to him."

I lean on the bar heavily.

"No. He wanted it. He had wanted that in the first place. It was part of some sick plan of theirs. The Cult of Skaro."

All at once, I felt so tired.

"If Sec had had his way originally," I finished grimly. "We all would have looked like him. And trust me that would not have been a nice way to go. Really, _he_ shouldn't have done that to himself."

For a moment, we both sat in silence. The bar had become busier, more and more people had filtered in from the street while we had been talking. Some had left, intimidated, when they had seen the Dalek, but those who had stayed had joined the crowd, their curiosity getting the better of them. We watched from our seats, contemplating the true alien within the shell that none of them could see.

"It's funny." Lewis said at last. "When I was younger, he seemed like the most gentle, the wisest person in the universe. He had told me that he was dangerous, that he had hurt a lot of people, but I guess I just never believed him."

"Not until now?"

"I might have known, deep down. I just didn't want to."

"I can understand that." I mused. Then I added, "When you're young there are a lot of things you don't want to believe about people you are fond of."

An unpleasant cloud of thoughts, momentarily took me away from the bar, the laughter, the heat. I thought of jazz music, the kind that was played here on a Friday night. The smell of coffee and newspaper, of the sun on wood polish on Sundays. Things that reminded me of a time, of people, that I had used to love, used to believe in. Things that no longer were. My Dad, now in Chicago. The way he had left us.

"Mmmm. You're right there." Lewis agreed, watching the Dalek. I was glad that, by the time he had looked round, he had missed me wiping away a tear.

"Why are you doing it?"

I chuckled deeply.

"Sticking with the Dalek? I've often wondered why too."

"But seriously. That's crazy."

I looked round at him in surprise, heated by his hypocrisy.

"That's rich coming from you. You followed him like a shadow when you were a kid."

"I know, but I stopped, didn't I?" Now Lewis seemed angry, concerned, and I found it disconcerting. I did not want a lecture.

"Listen, Eliza." He went on. "I had wanted to see you. I've wanted to see you all year. I didn't want to call in case you thought I was being a creep, so I just hoped I'd bump into you one day. And I have. I just did not expect to find you with the Dalek."

I blinked. He had wanted to see me after all?

Lewis closed his eyes, hard, cringing at his own words. But then, he went on, keeping his voice as level as his gaze.

"You can't stay around him. I know I did, and look at me. When I was a kid, he was the best friend I could ever wish for. He was like…like one of those robots kids meet in TV shows. Goddam it, he can even fly. To me, it was like a dream, but a dream is no place to live. I mean, look at me. Look at the choices I made! It screws you up as a person."

I knew it to be true, and so I hated every word of it. My mouth had become dry. I looked at Lewis, remembered the state he was in last year.

But with me, there was more too it.

"I know." I told him severely. A throbbing sensation had begun to ache around my chest. "Really, honestly I do. But I can't."

"You can. Just look at me." He smiled at me warmly, encouragingly. "If I could give that life up, then so can you."

"No Lewis, they made me sign papers." I said, using the plausible excuse. "I don't expect you to understand. I can't leave him. The Dalek needs me, and, I kind of need him too…"

Lewis furrowed his brow. I had made it sound wrong.

"What, like…"

"Ugh, Jesus no. Not even slightly. But he's my friend. He was you're friend too, so I thought, until you abandoned him."

"It was the right thing to do! It was the right thing. A thousand people could do your job. You have a life, you should go live it, like a normal person."

The throbbing in my chest had risen to a stabbing. I clenched my fists, tried to breathe steadily.

"That's the point." I tried to keep my voice level. "Things _can't_ go back to normal, not for me. Things can't go back to the way they were before. I don't have anyone else who…who gets what I've been through."

"What do you mean?"

And then it happened. A sensation I had been fighting, struggling against for months. I was not at the bar for folly, no. This was my first drink since I had stopped taking morphine.

And now, a memory, not a hallucination, swept through my mind, like the pulsing of blood through an artery, the flashing in the eyes when you stand up too quickly. I remembered the cold. My heart began to force its way up my throat, as if I was being hunted, chased. Demons of fire, of metal and decay, the glowing blue lights…

The sound of gunfire…

I turned on him.

"I've seen his World, Lewis!" I hissed. "His shitty, dead planet, where nothing grows and anything alive there rots where it stands and has no sanity. Remember those cute little alligator things you found in the Park? From Skaro. The Slyther, that urban phenomena that made the front page news? Skaro! The fucking Daleks, decomposing in their little metal shells. Fucking Skaro!"

Lewis was sitting back, blinking in surprise. In the back of my mind, I came aware that Sean the bar man had been listening too, paused in the middle of drying a glass. I knew what they thought. They thought I was crazy. I was crazy, and now I no longer cared.

"And you know what the worst part is?" I hissed, feeling the heat rise into my face. "I can never tell anyone. Not my friends. Not a councillor. None of the people I see, day to day, getting on with their lives. Not even my family! I have _no one!_ Just as well, because they'd think I was insane. _You_ think I'm insane! But you know what? It doesn't matter, 'cause fuck it, I probably am!"

"…Wait a second-"

"I _can't_ escape it Lewis! It's in my memory, it's in the hole in my chest and the sleeping pills." I paused, too tired to cry, but not drained enough to stop. My chest was hurting so much. I composed myself. Lewis had become quiet.

"But…Sec was there." I went on, numbly. "And, if he hadn't been. I would have been killed, so many times. He saw what had become of his planet, and he…" I remembered fire, erupting from each formidable shape. Daleks, dying under Dalek fire, "he did some horrible things, for him, in order that we both could come out alive. He's dangerous, yes, but I know which side he is on."

I took a deep breath, amazed that my eyes were dry. I felt the heat draining out of my face, as Lewis slowly shook his head.

"I-I wasn't supposed to tell you that. But, hey, what would it matter?" I finished numbly, swimming back to the stuffiness of the bar.

But Lewis still watched me. Slowly he turned away. He looked overwhelmed.

"After some of the shit I've known," He said, looking away into the distance, "I would be the last person to think you were insane."

_Crash._

We heard the shot before the Tiffany lamp above the bar exploded in a flash of blue. Multi-coloured glass cascaded from the ceiling.

"Holy _shit!_" Somebody screamed.

I barely had time to turn my head before the second lamp exploded, spraying shards of lead and sparks across the room.

Sean dived behind his bar, cursing.

I looked into the centre of the room, shielding my eyes.

Sec had pushed his way among the tables, his crowd of merry makers had left him, and were trying to get as far away from him as possible.

"Stop it!" I shouted, but too late. The Dalek took aim, and a bolt of burning blue light slashed across the room, taking out the third lamp with the sound of splintering glass. I leaped of the bar stool, Lewis following, and vaulted over the wooden barrier that separated the bar area from the tables. There was a dull buzzing sound, and the room was thrown into darkness. The hot, almost caramel-sweet scent of electrical burning filled the air.

I ran over to the Dalek, and grabbed him by the eyestalk, dragging it around until it faced me.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" I yelled. The dim blue glow of his eye, which had contracted to the size of a pea filled my vision, illuminated my face. In the murkiness of the room, I could make out the shapes of the other guests at the bar, who stood clustered around the door, watching us fearfully. Lewis was stood just behind me, arms by his side.

"It just went crazy! It gave us no warning!" One of the revellers screeched at me from the other side of the room.

"Yeah, What the fuck even is it?" A voice of a man demanded.

Lewis turned towards the crowd.

"Well maybe you should have just left him alone if you didn't know what he was." He reproached.

"Woah, hey man." The speaker laughed, exasperated, "Maybe _he_ shouldn't have been here in the first place. That thing's dangerous."

I looked back at Sec, looking straight into the tiny round light, forcing the creature inside to look right back at me. I had never tried to calm him before. This was the only thing I could think of.

"Come on." I said. "What happened?"

For a moment, the tiny blue light remained so. It was like the wild eye of a trapped animal. Then, slowly, with an almost inaudible whirring sound, it began to dilate.

"I..." He said, his modulated voice an octave higher than usual, and strangely quiet.

"I WISH TO LEAVE."

"Yeah," It came from behind the bar. From somewhere Sean had managed to find a torch. "I think you should."

"I think someone should call the police!" One of the revellers demanded. I felt a lurch of panic.

"No, don't do that," I protested, "that won't be necessary. I can pay for all the damages, I'll leave my number."

But Sec was already gliding towards the exit. The revellers backed away from him. Lewis hesitated, and then followed him, pulling the bronze-handled door open for him.

Reluctantly, I picked up a greasy paper menu, scrawled my details onto the back of it, and pushed it towards the barman. He nodded.

"That thing is no longer welcome here." He informed me. I murmured my apologies, and with glass crunching beneath my feet, I followed Lewis and the Dalek out onto the street, feeling the eyes of the revellers on me as I reached the door. The young couple, who had been trying to dissolve each other with their saliva when I had entered, were now holding onto each other tightly. For some reason, that was what made me feel ashamed.

What the hell _was_ I thinking, bringing Sec here?

SEC:

If there was one principal of my race in which I had always sought to preserve, it was that the Daleks had never engaged with alcohol. On that night, I had broken that principal.

The world, already dissociative behind the blue sepia glare of my eye stalk, had become even more so. It was as if the equipment had developed a fault, and everything seemed slower, blurrier, and ever so slightly shimmery.

The physical effect of consuming alcohol had felt like a small hammer hitting me on the back of my exposed occipital lobe, sending my nerves into a frenzy. It had been interesting. It had been dizzying, and curious. At first, I had wanted more.

But now, everything had gone wrong.

Out on the street, nothing had changed. The temperature, even now that it was dark, was exactly ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. The lights of the traffic that swept past turned everything blinding white, momentarily, before fading back to the eternal dusky blue, only to burn white again as another vehicle rushed past.

I drove forward, slowly, unthinkingly, but not with enough speed to go far. I knew I had to wait for Eliza, but at the same time I did not wish to see her. I knew she would be angry. I knew that I had spoilt her evening, made her look foolish, and that I had betrayed her trust. I had ruined everything. My age-old Dalek rage had not faded. It always surfaced when it was needed the least.

I became aware of the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk behind me. They were too heavy, too far apart to belong to Eliza. They belonged to somebody with longer legs, a taller specimen.

I rotated my dome, and saw Lewis Coleman catching up with me.

"I WISH TO REMAIN ALONE." I barked at him. Lewis slowed.

"I need to talk to you."

"NOW IS NOT CONVENIENT."

"Yeah, well I'm sure having your business literally blown to pieces is hardly convenient either! You need to calm down. You're still drunk."

I came to a halt. To my left, there stood an empty drugstore, the windows had been blanked out with sheets of old newspaper. Empty cardboard boxes had been left in piles outside. It had only closed down a week or so ago. More and more shops were beginning to close, empty out, as the recession began to devour its victims.

Some miscreant had already graffitied over the store front in large white letters.

"I DO NOT WISH TO CONVERSE WITH YOU." I told him harshly. "I MAY BECOME ANGRY AGAIN. I HAVE CAUSED ENOUGH DAMAGE."

"It's not about what happened back there, just..." Lewis swallowed, glancing around, then gestured with his head and stepped under the shade of the store's torn canopy. I followed him, hoping that whatever he had to say would be quick.

"Eliza told me," He began, lowering his voice, "that you returned to Skaro. Is that true?"

I narrowed my eyestalk.

"SHE DID?"

"Well, did you?" He asked. I looked away, occupying myself with examining the abandoned facade of the building next to us.

"YES. WE DID. BUT THAT WAS CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE CONFIDED IN YOU."

"Come on, I'm the last person whose going to tell anybody." Lewis sounded annoyed. "But, you went back to your home planet. That's what you have always wanted, isn't it?"

Humans were tiresome creatures. They asked too many questions. Daleks however, had been expected to know everything from birth, and to only have to ask questions during interrogations.

But Lewis had always asked questions. By now, I was used to it.

"IT _WAS_ WHAT I WANTED, YES." I replied icily, still avoiding his gaze.

"And? What was it like? Why didn't you stay there?"

"WHY? WOULD YOU RATHER I HAD?"

"For God's sakes Sec, I'm not trying to be funny."

"NOR AM I."

I stopped trying to decipher the message the graffiti spelt and focused on his thin face.

"EVERYTHING WAS DEAD, LEWIS." I said, bluntly. "THERE WERE OTHER DALEKS THERE, BUT THEY HAD A SICKNESS. THEY WERE MAD, AND IN PAIN. WE WERE IN GRAVE DANGER, AND SO WE HAD TO LEAVE."

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

"I see." Lewis coughed. "She was right then. And one of them nearly killed Eliza?"

"NO. SHE WAS SHOT BY A HUMAN SCIENTIST. HE WAS WAITING FOR ME, BUT HIT HER BY MISTAKE. HE WAS SUFFERING FROM DELUSIONS, I THINK. THAT IS NOT THE OFFICIAL STORY, HOWEVER."

There was a lengthy pause. I watched the expression on the humans face change as he processed this information.

"Right." Lewis blew out his cheeks. "You've both been through a lot together, haven't you?"

I made no answer.

"So now what?" He persisted.

I looked back at the wall. Yes, now what? Try and live like a human? Well, the evening had proved that this conclusion was somewhat futile.

What had happened? The drug had crushed sensibility, and all at once, finding myself in a relatively small space, surrounded by beings that were not Dalek also, had caused me to panic.

It was sheer luck that at the last minute I had aimed upwards.

"NOW? I REMAIN HERE." I told him bluntly.

"Maybe if you had left your casing behind, it would have been easier." Lewis suggested. It took me a moment to realise what he meant.

My vision snapped back to focus on his face.

"SHE TOLD YOU THAT TOO?"

Lewis smiled bleakly. He had tucked his hands into his pockets, and looked me straight into the lens of my eye, the same way that Eliza had.

"She did, yeah. I always wondered what you'd looked like. Couldn't you have?"

"I COULD NOT HAVE. SOME THINGS ARE BETTER CONCEALED." Everything I said sounded sharp, as if the words were made of broken glass.

"It can't be that bad. I mean, in exchange for freedom?"

He was right. But before I could deny it, the familiar sound of Eliza's footfall began to approach, Lewis turned and I tried to avoid looking at her directly.

"Oh. So now you're enjoying a little rendezvous then?" She snapped bitterly.

Neither Lewis nor I replied.

"Sec, you need to come back with me. Right now. I'm not pissing around tonight."

I did not need to look at her; the chemical scan told me everything. I could almost feel the heat of her anger.

Lewis removed his hands from his pockets.

"Do you want me to come? I mean, if you need any help, or"

"No." Eliza cut his offer short. "I don't need your help, and I don't want it either. He doesn't need an entourage."

Lewis stepped backwards. He looked at me with a mixture of regret and exhaustion. I had spent thirty years studying human emotions. I knew what this meant. He was fed up with me. Part of him wanted to know me, to be acquainted once more, but the other part had had enough. Had enough of Daleks. Had enough of the alien.

"Alright then. Goodnight. You after yourself." He said quietly, and walked away, following the sidewalk southwards. We watched him until he reached the edge of the block, then he turned left, and disappeared from sight.

"Come on then." Eliza turned to me. Now her words were empty of any emotion.

Still watching the corner where Lewis had gone, I happened to glance at the front of the empty store one more time.

It was only then that I actually realised what the white spray-painted words read.

_CAN YOU HEAR THEM WAITING?_

Now this was too much. I had found the same pretentious words written all over the city. They were on trash cans, on fences, in tunnels, even written in titanic lettering under the Brooklyn Bridge. Somebody certainly was determined.

"_CAN YOU HEAR THEM WAITING?_" I mimicked. "WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?"

Eliza had begun to walk away, but now she stopped.

"What?" She asked wearily.

I turned to her.

"THE GRAFFITI," I explained, looking from her to it. "I MEAN, WAITING DOES NOT SEEM LIKE AN ACTIVITY THAT PRODUCES A LOT OF SOUND."

Eliza's kohl heavy eyes scanned the facade.

"What graffiti?" She asked tonelessly.

Was something obstructing her sight? I looked back at the letters. Written in dripping white paint, capital letters, depicted in a vaguely Grecian script. How could she not see it?

"THERE, OVER THE WINDOW."

"I can't see anything Sec." Eliza repeated, with genuine confusion in her voice. "There isn't any graffiti. You're probably still drunk."

I was still looking at the wall, not daring to shift my gaze. All at once, I felt unsettled. I had seen it so many times before, while sober, and I knew that my eyestalk could not have been malfunctioning.

Something was wrong.

"Look, don't try to bullshit me Sec, because I'm not playing along. Stay here if you want, but I'm going."

Eliza's anger finally tore my focus away from the wall. I began to follow her, glancing back one more time.

The letters were still there.

"NEVER MIND, THEN." I said.

We made our journey in utter silence. We passed under scaffolding, crossed roads, under the glow of the street lamps which I knew to be orange, but would only be blue and dull through my vision.

Eliza walked ahead of me, keeping her pace quick. I trailed along behind, like an animal that had misbehaved.

Other humans; late night dog walkers, youths, tourists on evening walks, dishevelled itinerants, and more revellers passed us by, and I received my usual share of curious stares. But Eliza had all but vanished from view. Keeping her head low, she seemed to take up as little space as possible, she drew no attention to herself. She was so far ahead of me, that no passer-by could have thought that she had any connection to the ominous machine that drifted several paces behind her.

The only attention she gained was an ungainly shout from a catcaller inside a doorway with an overhanging belly and a bald head. Eliza, usually ready to throw curses in reply, walked straight ahead.

I shot at the man's feet, causing him to leap backwards and fall through the doorway. Eliza usually appreciated this. But now, she did not even look back.

We continued, making our way slowly towards the river, to the very edge of Upper West Side. Eliza's feet must have been sore, but she continued to walk. We were nearing my new home.

If there was one thing I could have thanked the authorities from the Columbia Facility for, it was their provision of accommodation.

I did not understand how Denise could complain about my appearance in public, when my living quarters were so far from the university. Then again, this was why Eliza had been employed.

I had been provided with the upmost floor of a redundant warehouse. It was an ugly building, five stories high, the lower floors used to store miscellaneous equipment formally belonging to the University, and containing old workshops. It had been built with red bricks, and had high arched windows like an old factory. A room two floors below mine was used for surveillance, and the storage space next to that held emergency arms.

I liked it better than North Brother Island.

It had the advantage of an elevator and reflective glass on the windows. The interior was scrubbed, Spartan, but spacious. It had less privacy than the Island; with security cameras, and an official keeping a constant vigil, but that was to be expected.

It was part of our agreement.

As the familiar structure loomed ahead out of the black night sky, however, I felt that I had abused this privilege. Eliza's silence was foreboding.

I followed her in silence into the weed-ridden yard that served as a loading bay. It was only then that I was able to speak.

"I AM SORRY." I told her.

Eliza made no answer. She walked straight over to the intercom, but she did not activate it. She folded her arms, and leaned against the wall. She closed her eyes, and lifted her head, looking exhausted. She did not look at me.

"I HAD PANICKED IN THE BAR." I tried to explain. "I DID NOT MEAN TO. I BECAME CONFUSED. THE FACILITY CAN PAY FOR THE DAMAGE."

No answer.

"PLEASE. TALK TO ME."

Eliza let out a long, weary sigh. All at once, she seemed to be many years older than she actually was.

"I don't know Sec. There isn't anything to say, really."

I remembered how I had perceived her the first time I saw her. She was a small person, youthful, quick. She was not particularly feminine, skinny, but not willowy. She often wore collared shirts and jeans, although tonight she had dug out a short dress. At the beginning of the evening, another human could have seen her and called her beautiful. But in the darkness, she looked fragile. Her bare ankles looked too thin. Her dark, curly hair, although pinned at the fringe with a silver clip seemed to dwarf her. The make-up around her eyes made them look larger than they really were.

"I'm sorry." She said. "I shouldn't have put you in that situation. I was being selfish. I don't know how to help you. I thought I did, but I don't."

I drove a little closer, and came to a stop next to her.

I remembered my serotonin readings earlier that day. They were low. They had been low for a long time.

For the first time, I wondered if perhaps she was ill, in some way.

"YOU DO HELP ME." I informed her, lowering the volume of my voice. "BUT PERHAPS YOU NEED TO HELP YOURSELF, TOO."

Eliza smiled the smallest of smiles.

"I'll be alright." She said, her voice almost roguish. "Perhaps I need to spend less time with human hybrids, that's all. More time with whole humans."

"I THINK I AGREE."

We spoke through the intercom, and walked through the bare lobby to where the goods lift waited.

We took it to the fifth floor, switching on the bulb lamps that hung from the ceiling, lighting the enormous loft that was my home.

Eliza called a cab. She sent me a text to say that she had arrived home safely.

I opened my casing, and crawled out of the cramped darkness, stretching out my limbs, growing, transforming into my true form. I had been instructed to try and maintain the form overnight, if the day time became too exhausting.

I rinsed off the excess slime and dried residues that clung to my body in the shower, then pulled on a pair of shorts, and spread myself out onto the bare mattress which served as a bed. The furniture in the loft was salvaged, second hand, consisting of little more than a refrigerator, which was stocked with fresh food once a week, not of my own choosing, a table, the shower, a toilet and a basin separated by a pair of wooden boards, and a cupboard.

I lay on the mattress, having switched out the lights, staring out of the arched window. The air conditioning whirred loudly. It was too warm to sleep with a blanket.

But, with or without one, sleep refused to come.


	5. Chapter Four: The Tear

Chapter Four: The Tear

ELIZA:

_I first became aware of the sound. It was a low rhythmic thrumming, like the engine of an enormous machine. I felt it through the floor and through the very air, through my teeth and through my spine. _

_And then, I came aware of the smell. It was putrid, but slightly sweet. It was a smell that, fundamentally, I was familiar with, but it had changed. It had become stronger. It was now a smell of rotting, a smell of infection. _

_As if to accompany the stench, there came another sound. It was a clicking, like the twitching of moist flesh, the snapping of strings of mucus. It was something alive. And it was standing right behind me. _

_Then, the colour red. It was if I had woken, as if my eyes had opened for the first time. The red was heavy, smothering, as if I was standing at the bottom of a scarlet ocean, the pressure crushing the air and compressing my ear drums._

_But, no. This was not an ocean. I was standing in a tunnel. It was tubular, like a giant sculpture of an artery. The hexagonal panelled ceiling was translucent, and the light which danced above it thrummed, moved in streams, as if pushed by a current. It moved in time with the beating of my heart._

_It was only then that I noticed the dark shape, standing a little way behind me. I tried to turn my head, but it was impossible. I had become rigid, but I swayed, unstable. I was frozen to the spot, even though I was too weak to stand. _

_The shape stepped closer. _

"_Thank you." It whispered in a rasping voice that I knew too well. Although he was still far away, his voice was close, as if whispered into my ear, close enough for me to feel it, for the hair at the back of my neck to rise. I wanted to run, but I knew that this would be impossible._

"_Why are you thanking me?" I heard my own voice say. It sounded as if somebody else was saying it, somebody submerged in water. "What have I done for you?"_

_He took another step closer._

"_Everything." The whispered voice hissed. "You sacrificed yourself. The same way I sacrificed myself, _for them!"

_And suddenly I could see him. It was as if my eyes had become the camera in a film, and I was looking through myself. _

_The spectral form of Sec stood, thrown into shadow. He was in his anthropomorphic form, and yet his single eye glowed like the mechanical eye of his casing; impossibly round, unblinking. His tentacled face writhed as if it was being eaten by maggots, or as if he was a gorgon from a story book. _

_But the smell of rotting did not come from him. _

_It came from me. _

_It came from the enormous round hole from which I observed the hybrid. _

_A huge round hole, ragged and bloodied at the edges, that had been torn through my own body. _

I retched.

My eyes flew open.

I fought off the tangled sheets which clung to my body, tumbled off the bed, stumbled blindly into the bathroom, switched on the light, and barely made it to the bowl before I heaved out the contents of my stomach.

Vomit splattered loudly as it hit the bowl.

I stared at my mess. The shock of the nightmare had paralysed me. Slowly I sunk to my knees. I tried to breathe. Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. In…

Soon my heart was pounding a little less, but I had pull a towel around me to stop the shaking. I looked around vaguely.

My bathroom felt blindingly bright after the darkness of sleeping. It felt stark and unfamiliar. It had a matt black tiled floor, a smart walk-in shower and a white porcelain tub that rested on gilded legs. It was a world away from the bare boards and cracked plaster ceiling of my last place.

With the money I was being paid by the Facility, I could afford it, and I was willing to pay for it.

But, as I leaned back, lying my head on my washing basket, I wondered if it was worth it.

The nightmare had been one of many. I would have them once, maybe twice a week. They were becoming less frequent, but the content was becoming more alarming. In them, the sidewalks of empty streets would transform into body parts. Blood would soak up through the ground as I tried to run. In others, parts of me would drop away, like my hair, or my nails and teeth, until there would be nothing left but my bones.

Sometimes the Slyther would tear at me, a shadow becoming solid, with teeth like a trench fish, sickles for claws and pinprick white eyes.

Mostly, they were about the Daleks.

I saw their cold blue eyes stare at me from out of the darkness. Things would pursue me, filling the air in a solid wall of metal. Once, I was trapped in a tiny space, feeling my skin bubble as if it was melting, and hearing them scream at me, telling me that I was changing, I was becoming one of them. That had been the worst.

But the inevitable feature in all my nightmares, regardless of topic, was the tear. The pain of the bullet wound was replayed to me over and over again in my head, night after night. I was unable to escape it.

Tonight's dream, however, was the first that had featured Sec.

I sat up a little as my neck and shoulders complained about my slumped position. I did not want Sec to enter my nightmares. If he did, day to day life could become unbearable. I had to see him every day. Despite all of his short comings, he was my friend. I did not want to be afraid of him.

Last year, before I had come out of hospital, a doctor had come in to give me a briefing about my condition. I would need to be on pain killers. I would need to take things easy. I could become depressed.

He also told me about Post Traumatic stress.

He had told me that I could experience flashbacks and nightmares. He told me that I could become angry and I could become withdrawn.

He also told me that places, situations, or events that would remind me of the trauma could trigger the symptoms.

I closed my eyes, and felt myself grimace.

If this was the case, then what the hell _was_ I doing working around the Hybrid?

It was madness.

What was it that he had said in the dream?

_You sacrificed yourself. The same way I sacrificed myself for them._

It could not be true. The man who had shot me, Patrick Thayer; he had meant to hit Sec. Shoot him in the chest, or through the single eye of his casing, the only weak spot on a Dalek's armour. The fact that it had been me who had run around the corner, me who had been hit first had been purely accidental. But it had bought us time. Thayer had been aiming to kill something that had murdered, not somebody innocent. He had panicked. It had not been a sacrifice. It had been a mistake.

I felt something warm splash onto my hand. I looked down. I was crying. The tears stung salty on my cheeks. I did not bother to wipe them away, because now that I thought about it, I realised that I _had_ sacrificed my life. I was not permitted to talk to anyone about my experience. It isolated me from my friends and from family because of the secrecy. I was, in fact, giving up my life, for Sec.

Everything that had happened tonight. Taking the Dalek into the bar, telling everything to Lewis, Sec freaking out and breaking things; it was all a sign that everything was going horribly wrong. I was not thinking straight.

I should have been angrier at the Hybrid. I should not have forgiven him so easily. But it was hard, when I felt that I truly was responsible for everything. I had been stupid. Denise could fire me if she found out, and I knew that she would.

It was all so stupid.

My knees were beginning to ache. I pulled myself to my feet, still wearing the towel around my shoulders, and trudged into the other room. My new apartment was not particularly larger than my last, but was a lot more modern and comfortable. The wooden boards were smooth underfoot, warm. The walls were fashionably unplastered, sporting the bare brick, my art nouveau prints dominating the space. The windows were covered by venetian blinds. Sadly, in my present state of mind these features gave little comfort.

I pulled a book of the shelf and sank onto the sofa, flicking to the front page.

It was _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_. Despite being my favourite book in the series, I could not concentrate. The words stared lifelessly back at me from the page, and no matter how I tried, my own thoughts and doubts flittered before my eyes, refusing to let the story draw me in. With a sigh of frustration, I closed the book, pulled the TV remote out from under a cushion, and switched on the set. I could not go back to sleep, not like this.

When was the last time I had hung out with anyone? Anyone who was human, that is? Didn't the real Sec agree that I needed to spend more time in their company? I wracked my brains.

The last member of my family I had visited had been my mother. That was over a month ago. It had not been great.

She had suggested that I came around for dinner. I had decided to bring some flowers, and had settled on a pot of red geraniums.

My mother had moved out of our childhood home quite soon after the divorce. She was now living in a bungalow on Staten Island.

I had loved our old house. It had been in a good neighbourhood, upright and squeezed between the other buildings on the terrace, and had stuccoed white walls and curving bay windows. In side it had a blue carpet that clashed playfully with the yellow painted walls, and a long back yard with an old sycamore tree growing out of the lawn. The tree had been growing as long as the house had been there, for over a hundred years, and had boughs strong enough to hold a swing set. Last time I looked, a new family had moved into it; a white couple with four kids. They had cut down the tree as its roots were disturbing the fence. As you can imagine, this did not make me too happy.

The new house suited my mother better.

As I had climbed out of the cab, clutching a grocery bag and the plant, I had been quietly impressed. The front garden was alive, exploding with flowers of white, purple and subtle yellows. I had spotted my mother around the corner, squatting by a bed with a pair of secateurs. Her hair had been tied back in a red scarf, and she was wearing a green dress with a bold Indian print. She did not even look up as I approached.

"Lavender." She said, as if in the way of an acknowledgement. "Smells divine. Makes a good tea, helps you sleep. I think everybody should grow themselves some."

She had cut off a bunch of the dusty stalks, and tied them with a length of string.

"Today, however, I thought it would look nice on the table. Now what's that you've got there for me?"

I had looked down at the flower pot I held in my hands.

"Oh, this? I picked them up on the way Mom. I thought-"

But my mother had tutted.

"You didn't think carefully, that much I can tell. Geraniums are such ugly flowers; all beefy green stalks and no elegance. I was going for purples and whites, nothing bold. Everybody round here is growing geraniums. That's what old ladies grow. Is your mother an old lady Eliza?"

She had straightened up and turned to face me.

My mother had always been widely renowned for her astonishing beauty. Now, at the age of fifty, this was not about to change. Her dark skin was unmarked and her long face was barely lined. The grey that had begun to colour her hair only enhanced it, and she was able to work with its voluminous frizziness by pulling it back into an elaborate bun. It was a skill I had never mastered. Her almond eyes were symmetrical to one another, a beauty spot sat on her left cheek. She had always eaten well and had stayed effortlessly slender throughout her life. Such beauty was a gift, but could also be intimidating. My brother Malcolm had inherited her height, her good looks and her tameable hair. I on the other hand had taken after my father. I was top-heavy, wiry, my nose covered in a cosmos of small dark freckles, and I was doomed forever to be half a head shorter than average women of my age, if not for my explosive curls. The lottery of inheritance was a cruel game.

We had gone inside, my mother clutching the lavender and finding a vase, while I had set the rejected geranium on the kitchen counter. For dinner she had roasted a leg of lamb. We ate it with mint sauce, grilled vegetables and rosemary. There had been a raspberry flan for dessert. At different points during the meal, we had both made attempts at conversation, but had then fallen silent.

The hostility I had shown her on previous occasions made me ashamed.

Rightly or wrongly, it had been because I had picked sides. I had always seen my father as an easy going man, someone adaptable, accommodating, and level headed. The way I saw him most as a child was him seated in an armchair by the bookshelf in our living room, either marking homework, or reading a book or the news. He wore old fashioned glasses with thick rims, like the kind that Gregory Peck wore in _To Kill a Mockingbird_. He drank the blackest coffee of anyone I knew and never touched alcohol.

He liked to play music on our old record player in the sitting room. It was a range of things; from Bach organ music to seventies pop. Sometimes, if I was unlucky enough to walk into the sitting room while a livelier piece was playing, my Dad would leap from his chair, take me by the hands and proceed to perform some cheesy dance routine of his own invention. When I was little, I found this funny, but as soon as I reached twelve it was deadly embarrassing.

"Dad!" I would shout. "Stop it! I'm not six anymore; you're so uncool!"

My Dad would laugh, shaking his head, and go sit back down in his chair. He had been a man of few words.

And my mother had always been a woman of even fewer.

Somehow, my Dad's ease with the world did not sit well with my mother's quiet intensity. Annabelle Birchwood, now Annabelle Huxley again, had little ways of showing her disapproval. Often, just a stare from her could silence anybody.

If she disapproved of what my father said or did, she would linger in doorways, folding her arms and fixing him with her gaze. She did not like little things, like how he would allow me and my brother to watch too much TV or eat junk food. When I had told my Dad that I wanted to be a cop, she chided him for encouraging me.

"Eliza's not going to be a cop, Theo. She's going to go to college and she's going to get a degree. Joining the police; I can't think of a more hideous profession."

On this instance, my father did not even look up from his paper.

"It's her life, Anna. She can do whatever she wants with it."

My mother raised her chin.

"I did not work my ass off so my little girl could get some blue collar job. She's too smart for that; it's a waste. If she wants to deal with criminals, tell her to become a lawyer."

My father had folded his newspaper and raised his palms passively.

"Fine, fine. But you tell her that, not me. Let her decide for once."

I had overheard that exchange from the top of the stairs.

I think it was his passiveness that annoyed my mother the most. Most of their disagreements that they had seemed to consist of her shouting at him, and him raising his hands in false agreement. But as far as I knew, they never hurt each other. Their marriage had boiled over long ago, and then just evaporated, leaving a sad grey residue at the bottom of a pan. For the sake of the metaphor, I shall say that this residue was me and Malcolm. Except, Malcolm was doing well in life. So was I, in a way. I was just unhappy.

Suffice to say, the acidity of my mother's personality and her complete lack of regret, had done little to bridge the hole in our relationship on our last meeting.

I had left her house by taxi again, politely refusing her half-hearted offers to stay the night, and I had taken that ridiculous red geranium with me. She had made no comment.

I had given the geranium to Sec the next day. He had previously expressed an interest in growing plants.

I had placed it in the middle of the old lab table that sat in the centre of his warehouse home.

"What is that?" He had asked. He was out of his casing at the time.

"A flower. Thought you might like it."

"Why?"

"Because that's what you do. You give gifts to people you like."

I had then slumped down onto his old mattress, and then hastily got up again because of the smell.

"And then," I had gone on, disgruntled, "they have to accept them. Whether they like the gift or not. Because most people aren't douchebags."

I had watched as Sec had touched the leaves with a gnarled finger, then lifted one of the flowers to inspect it.

"You do not seem to get on with your mother very well." He had said perceptively.

A photo of my mother, Malcolm and I, sat beside my now blaring television, and without thinking I had ended up staring at it. I looked back at the TV. It was showing Hitchcock's _North by Northwest._ It was almost over. I had paid it little attention. Now, his love interest was hanging perilously off Thomas Jefferson's forehead on Mount Rushmore. Although I had never seen it before, I had a suspicion that she would be alright. Spoiler alert: she was. There then came the criminally brief conclusion, which prompted me to reach for the remote. The screen went blank.

Silence.

I lay back, and realised that I was too hot. I shrugged off the towel. The heat was stifling, even for New York standards. I begged internally for rain.

I tried to think of someone else, someone who was not family, who I had attempted to socialise with. I thought about the past week. Nobody sprung to mind. I had chatted to Louise in the Columbia labs for about an hour. I had learned that her family came from Virginia, and that she was very fond of animals and owned two Labradors, one called Honey and the other called Woody. But did that count? No, that was work. It had been while I was waiting for the damned hybrid to finish his lab shift; suddenly, now that there was a risk of the funding being withdrawn, they were beginning to treat him as an equal. This was all very well and good.

Except now it was I who felt like the alien.

I stretched my mind back. _Two weeks ago_. People from the University? From the law school? Did I have friends there? I had to.

I had had coffee with a girl named Veronica on a Tuesday. She was nineteen, white, had a short red bob cut and smoked rolled cigarettes. Initially she had seemed nice, but I had found her company severe and her dogged Marxism a little pretentious. She was a typical college age girl, getting political and spouting her knowledge like a peacock tail display. And why not? This country had plenty of shit to deal with. But I knew, just looking at her, that as soon as college was over, and she had a job, the politics would fade.

It felt that way with most of my peers. I was twenty-four years old. Among them, I was basically a senior. I did not live in halls. Everything about their lifestyle felt old, as if I had been there already. I saw the excessive drinking and the college pride it as a fragile thing; it would crumble away as soon as they left and real life began. I did not want it to feel that way. I wanted to have fun.

But what I had said to Lewis was true.

There was no way that I could.

What I had seen, what had happened to me, would affect me for the rest of my life no matter how much I tried to bury it.

I had considered seeing a therapist.

It would have had to be someone who the Facility approved of, and it would need to be strictly private.

It was all so complicated. And on top of everything else, my studies were beginning to suffer.

I lay right back on the sofa, my eye catching the clock on the cooker behind me. It read 03:45. I groaned. I wanted to sleep, so badly.

But instead, I thought all the harder about my dwindling human interactions.

What about old friends? _Real_ friends?

What about Melanie?

I did not want to think about Melanie. Texting her, let alone talking to her face to face, was beginning to feel awkward. I felt bad. She had been my best friend. She had been with me all the way to high school. Now, she was studying at Parsons, and seemed, almost deliberately to be ignoring me. Was I just imagining it? Was it in the short responses that she gave me in messages? Was it the fact that she always seemed to be busy whenever I asked if we could meet up? I did not know.

I mean, it was natural for friends to drift apart after a while. Melanie and I had always been different. Melanie, on her part, had always been distinctly odd. We both were, but her quirks were almost alienating.

She had new friends now, who liked art and drawing and shared the same interests. Fashion students seemed to make a point of being odd.

Remembering the last time I had met her casually, had been a disaster.

I was stressed, yes. The night before I had been mauled by a mutant alien monstrosity, had a conversation with another, and I had taken it out on her. Although, in my mind, I had a legitimate reason for being angry, it was no excuse for acting that way.

I was too warm on that sofa. To worried to sleep, but too tired to stay awake, too exhausted to get off the couch and go back to bed. Besides, the ghost pain in my chest was beginning to play up, making me feel all the more tired.

When were things going to get better?

_Were_ things going to get better at all?

Then suddenly, the darkness of my thoughts brought me back to the abysmal events of my evening, and my thoughts took me to a conclusion that I had never dared to believe.

_Everything would have been fine if I had never met Sec._

When I opened my eyes, the oven clock read 8:20. Apparently I had managed to sleep after all. Somewhere in my apartment, my phone was ringing.

The sunlight was slicing through the venetian blinds, leaving a razor blade pattern on my floor. It was yet another sweltering, cloudless day. My front room was already beginning to feel like a furnace.

I rolled off the sofa rubbing my eyes, fully regretting the fact that I had to part with it. I blindly found my way back into my bedroom, sat down hard on the mattress, and picked up the trembling device.

I looked at the screen, and blinked in confusion.

In pixelated black letters, the little screen informed me that Malcolm was calling.

Malcolm? Malcolm never called me, not anymore. Like many of my childhood friends, my older brother had drifted away from me as soon as grades and girlfriends had become a part of his life.

Now he worked at Wall Street and had been happily married for the past nine years. We could not have been more different.

Not quite knowing what to expect, I pressed the receiver button and lifted the phone to my ear.

"Hi there Malcolm."

"_Oh hey there Eliza,_" My brothers deep, rich voice answered. From the echo, I could tell that he was standing in his kitchen. "_How is everything?_"

"Everything is good." The lie was of little consequence. "How about you? I haven't heard from you in ages."

"_Oh, were fine, were fine. Norma-Jean is just making her lunch._" There was a momentary pause._ "Actually,_" he went on,"_I was going to ask you, are you busy at the weekend?_"

I sat up. Was this an invite? Did a member of my family actually want to see me?

"No, I'm not." I answered slowly. "Why?"

"_Er, well, this is kind of short notice, I know, but Odette and I are going to a wedding in L.A. It's a cousin of hers, and we've been planning it for months."_

"Wow. Nice."

"_It's beautiful, yes. We're going to be so lucky with the weather. But, see, Norma-Jean was always going to stay at home. It's adults only._"

All at once, the vision of a family barbeque in the sun dissolved in front of my eyes. It was replaced with the feeling a mongoose must have when faced with a snake.

Norma-Jean was my nine year old niece. When she had been born, she had been an adorable thing, with her big brown eyes, dopey infant expression and her little scrunched up face. I had come over as often as I could, and was willingly pressganged into reading story books and pushing toy trucks around the floor (Malcolm believed in gender-neutral parenting and I saluted him for it).

I had promised that I would be the best auntie to her that I could.

But at the age of six, her true nature hatched out like a killer butterfly from a poisonous chrysalis.

"Ri-i-i-ight…" I said, dreading what was coming next.

"_Well, we had hired an Au Pair to babysit until Monday, but she's caught a virus and told us last night that she can't come. We've been ringing round everywhere, but everyone's busy so…"_

"So, you want me to babysit." I finished for him.

"_Would you Eliza? Because that would be really great._"

"Sure." I heard myself say. It was his funeral. When it came to kids, I had no clue.

"_Great. That's really great. You'll have to be here by six though. Our flight leaves tonight_."

"Tonight? That _is_ short notice!" I tried to joke, feeling myself scream internally. "Um, you're back on Monday then?"

"_Should be. Are you sure it's alright with you?_"

There was a definite strain to my older sibling's voice. I knew what he was thinking. Was he _really_ about to let his crazy ex-cop sister care for his child?

"Of course!" I said, sounding a little too enthusiastic. "It's nothing. She's my niece; we're family. Of course I'll do it."

"_Thank you so much._" Malcolm's voice was mingled with both relief and further nerves. "_Just give us a ring if there's any problems._"

"I will. See you tonight."

I heard him shout out into the kitchen.

"_Norma, your aunt's going to babysit you tonight! Won't that be fun? She's on the phone, do you want to say hello?_"

The stony silence which followed seemed to answer in the negative. I heard Malcolm clear his throat uncomfortably.

"_Ahh, well, she was busy. Her Mom was about to drop her round. You'll get on like a house on fire, you and Norma. She really likes you."_

I made a non-committal noise with which Malcolm seemed satisfied.

"_Well, see you this evening then._"

"Buh-bye."

"_Bye then._"

The phone bleeped to indicate the end of the call. I lowered the phone from my ear, staring unseeing at the opposite wall.

What had I done? I had to care for a child now, for nearly three days. Not only a living, breathing thing, but a thinking, plotting, scheming thing, which hated me from the bottom of its heart. And I had to do it, while I was feeling like this.

On the one hand, it was good. This was what I had wanted. I was seeing family, making amends, showing myself to be a mature, responsible adult.

But on the other hand…

Well…

Suddenly, the prospect of my day job with the Dalek hybrid seemed as welcoming as a basket full of puppies.

I fell back on my bed, the sheets billowing around me.

Dear God, what had I just got myself into?


	6. Chapter Five: Scar Tissue

Chapter Five: Scar Tissue

SEC:

On that Friday morning, the censors in my mark III travel machine picked up the minute tick that was emanating from the Medusa Cascade in the far throws of deep space. It was a tiny thing. One second. Nothing more.

On any other morning, my reaction would have been instant. But on this morning, of all mornings, I was hungover.

As I became conscious, everything was hurting. A sensation of intense heat was spreading slowly across my body, burning red through my closed eyelid. Reflexively, I tried to draw away from the source. Big mistake.

My stomach lurched. A feverish aching spread across my many limbs. It was as if the hydrostatic fluid in my tentacles had become super-heated, and was beginning to melt out of my skin. It became very clear to me, in a rational way, that if I attempted to move in any way again, it would become worse, and I would quite probably die.

_It is your own fault, you know_.

_You have indulged in one of the most primitive habits of the human species, and now you suffer for it._

_The children of Skaro will walk again, indeed. I would be surprised if you could even _crawl_ again!_

It was true, and I hated myself for it. I hated the little voice more because it was reminding me of it. Was it possibly to destroy the part of my conscience that supplied it? Or would that involve too much effort?

So I resolved to lie as completely still as possible, like a small animal hiding from a predator, until the worst of it was over. Time went by. The burning sensation increased. I realised that it was caused by the sunlight coming in from the open window, and as the morning went on, the position of the light was changing and drawing a patch of window-pane-shaped fury over my mattress-shaped mausoleum.

I grew to dislike the sun immensely. No wonder my kind had destroyed so many of them.

I had lost my anthropomorphic form while sleeping. I longed for the quiet sensual depravity of my casing. Why had I ever left it? Why had I chosen to feel? Why had I chosen to become flesh and blood and why had life even pulled itself out of the swamps of prehistory, and what even _was _life?

Why _had_ I ever left it?

_Because you were tired of hurting_, the dislocated part of my brain said.

This time, it sounded sad.

_It was always like this, was it not? Lying still, hating the light, hurting whenever you tried to move. Last night, you ingested poison, but once your very blood was poison. And you would not rest until all living things had tasted your pain. _

_Yes. You remain._

_And so does the poison. _

_Did you not try to save them, Supreme One?_

_Did you not try to reach the light?_

_Can you hear them waiting, Supreme One._

It was only then that I realised that I was not fully in control of this part of my mind. It felt suddenly like a separate voice, trying to talk to me.

Those words.

The same words that I had seen around the city, over and over again.

Who was this?

What did they want?

I opened my eye, afraid, and blinked furiously as the sun blinded it.

The voice was gone.

The headache, sadly, had not.

"Knock knock."

The voice echoed overly-cheerfully up the elevator shaft. It was Eliza.

I had been lying in the same position, unmoving, for about an hour now.

Then, there came the earth-shattering rattle of the goods car ascending.

Eliza. What time was it? She must have called me, and because I had not answered, she must have decided to let herself in.

It was a core principal of the arrangement. Eliza would arrive at the warehouse every morning to escort me to and from the Facility. It was a short journey, but a necessary precaution in the eyes of the lab staff.

Usually, she would send a message to my casing, and I would meet her outside. Most often, we would pick up breakfast from a takeaway or a café, and consume it while walking or on a bench. In the afternoons, depending on the weather, we often passed through parks or by the quayside. A couple of times, we had broken the rules and stole back to her apartment to eat pizza and play computer games. Sometimes Eliza spoke while I stayed silent, sometimes vice versa, sometimes we would become engaged in heated discussions about moral issues or politics and some days, neither of us spoke because we had no need to.

It was the closest thing I had to any kind of leisure time, and it was more than substantial.

There was a grating noise as the old gate on the elevator drew back, and Eliza's footsteps echoed on the concrete floor. Every sound was uncomfortable amplified.

"Oh God." I heard her remark. "You look terrible."

From the corner of the room, after a long psychic fumble, I was able to activate the voice of my casing.

"I…HAD COME TO BELIEVE THAT I ALWAYS LOOK TERRIBLE." It said, with notable resignation. My mechanised voice had begun to take on human qualities. Time had altered so many things.

"Yeah, but not like this." Eliza responded. "Usually I would have said that beauty-wise, you were an acquired taste, but this really is bad. Can you move?"

I attempted to sit up.

"NO." I concluded. "I THINK I AM GOING TO VOMIT."

"Thought so. Stay there a sec, Sec."

"OH VERY FUNNY."

I cracked open my eye a fraction.

An unfocused shape, most probably Eliza, was taking off its rucksack and placing it on the fuzzy mass that may have been the table, and rubbing its forehead while looking in my direction.

"I can pass you a bowl." It said. "And you're probably dehydrated, so you'll need to drink some water."

"I DO NOT THINK THAT WILL BE POSSIBLE."

"Yes it will. You'll feel much better."

The shape made its way towards the tap, and slowly came into focus.

"Perhaps you should take a day off." It advised.

It was a tempting offer. But the drawback was clear.

"BUT IF I SAY I AM ILL," My casing reminded her, "THEY SHALL WANT TO KNOW WHY, AND COME HERE FOR AN EXAMINATION, AND THEN THEY SHALL KNOW THAT I WAS DRINKING AND…YOU WILL BE REMOVED FROM YOUR POSITION."

There came the sound of rushing water.

"Good point." The shape, which now looked much more human agreed. "Just pretend not to be hungover then. Stay in your casing. That's basically like having a day off. Wish I could do that."

She came over carrying the glass and a bowl, placing both by my side, and sat on the floor as I tried to muster the energy to drink it. Gradually, my senses began to sharpen once more. Eliza seated herself on the floor next to me, seemingly as tired as I was.

"ELIZA?" I asked, once the glass of water was drained.

"What is it?"

"HAVE YOU EVER HAD THE SENSATION THAT YOU ARE IN A SCENARIO IDENTICLE TO ONE YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED PREVIOUSLY?"

Eliza rubbed her eyes. She was wearing no make-up.

"Say that again, in English please."

My tentacles were still resting within the clothing I had worn in my hybrid form while sleeping. I shook them off.

"AS IF SOMETHING IS HAPPENING THAT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE?" I rephrased.

"Oh. You mean like déjà vu?"

I pondered for a moment.

"NOT EXACLTY. I FEEL AS IF SOMETHING IS _ABOUT_ TO HAPPEN. IT IS DISSIMILAR TO A FLASHBACK."

Eliza sighed through her nose.

"I see. Well, perhaps you're a clairvoyant." She suggested, without much enthusiasm. "What kind of something?"

I was unable to provide a sufficient answer.

"I DO NOT KNOW. AND THAT IS WHAT CONCERNS ME."

Eliza stood up.

"If it's in any way apocalyptic, then it's probably about tonight." She announced, making her way across the room again. The deathly sensation that accompanied movement had faded a little. I pulled myself off the mattress, curious. Movement in my lesser form was not impossible as much as impractical. It involved puling my body forward with my front two tentacles, the way an octopus might have moved if it was ever out of water. The excess of slime made the movement slug-like in speed and efficiency.

"WHAT IS HAPPENING TONIGHT?" I inquired.

Eliza had opened her bag and was taking out a box of eggs.

"Tonight, I babysit my niece."

By now, I had reached the table, and looked up at her questioningly.

"WHY IS THAT BAD?" I attempted to pull myself onto the old bar stool that stood by the table. It required a great amount of physical strength. "SURELY THAT IS WHAT YOU NEED; MORE CONTACT WITH YOUR FAMILY?"

Eliza smiled a tight sarcastic smile as she pulled open my fridge and inspected the contents.

"You obviously have never met Norma-Jean Birchwood then. She is barely human." She glanced in my direction. "Need a hand?"

"I CAN MANAGE." I answered her, as I finally managed to struggle onto the bar stool. Eliza continued to scan the fridge.

"Good. I thought I could rustle up some omelettes or something, as you're not feeling well. Got any mushrooms?" Eliza had never cooked for me before.

"I DO NOT THINK SO. TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR NIECE. I FAIL TO SEE HOW THIS IS PROBLEMATIC."

She emerged from the fridge holding some tomatoes.

"Well, have you ever wrestled a sabre-tooth tiger?"

I rested my tentacles on the table top, my brain hurting.

"NO, I HAVE NOT. MOSTLY BECAUSE THEY ARE EXTINCT. SECONDLY BECAUSE I AM A DALEK."

"Neither have I," Eliza went on, "but I'm pretty sure I'd rather do that than babysit this particular child. She's a monster. She watches too much Disney Channel and represents everything wrong with the western world."

"ELIZA, YOU OVEREXAGGERATE. HUMANS DO THIS FREQUENTLY. IT IS INCREDIBLY IRRITATING, AND I WISH THEY WOULD CEASE."

"Seriously, I'm not. But if it means seeing my brother and trying to patch things up with him, I'll do it."

"HOW OLD IS SHE?"

"Nine."

"WOW. NINE AND WORSE THAN A TIGER. THE DALEKS COULD HAVE LEARNED FROM HER."

Human relations bothered me enormously, but looking at Eliza, I realised that this was important to her. Although I felt awful, she seemed unwell too, with dark patches under her eyes. Her movements seemed to have slowed too. I also knew that her culinary abilities were limited at the best of times. I looked at the frying pan she had pulled from downstairs.

"LET ME MAKE THE OMLETTE. MY PHYSICAL WELLBEING HAS IMPROVED."

Eliza snorted sceptically.

"Don't. You're ill. You'd have to turn into the hybrid to give it a go anyhow."

I bristled internally. I felt far too tired still to attempt the transformation. But alternately, I wanted to prove my independence to her.

I slipped off the bar stool, the familiar cracking sensation spreading through my body. I saw Eliza watch me, and then shrug. I scooped up my pants and shirt with a tentacle as I passed my mattress, and made it into the cover of the shower cubicle as my tail-appendage began to curve, becoming my spinal column.

The subsequent change took around three minutes. Two additional were wasted by leaning heavily against the wall once it was done, blinking hard to get rid of the stars in my vision. The transformation had become easier, in some ways. Either that, or I had just become used to it. The Daleks had a generally higher tolerance to pain than humans.

This was because their every waking moments had been filled with a slow, aching throb, as their tiny bodies were pumped with fluids and power from their shells, trying to keep alive what could not live.

Just as the voice had said.

I rubbed my brain with my right hand, and as I did, I caught sight of my reflection in the glass that separated the shower from the basin. It was mostly acrylic, as glass could be broken too easily and a sharp edge was a risk. But it was very reflective. And the gnarled, ugly shape that stared back at me appeared doubled over, ancient, and ultimately unfamiliar. There was no other creature like it in the whole universe. It was neither Dalek, nor human, and I had learned the hard way that neither species could ever accept it as one of them.

Swallowing, I turned around, and turned my head so that I could see the reflection of my bare back.

Like the rest of my body, the back of the creature in the mirror was unsightly. The spine protruded more so than on a human, and the skin was mottled and scaly, continuously peeling away and renewing itself. There were stretch marks and ridges across the back, suggesting where parts had once been tentacle, moulded by human bone and muscle. Yet, despite its repulsiveness, there was a visible symmetry to it, as if it had grown that way, as if it was supposed to be.

The symmetry was interrupted by the scars.

Carefully, I bended a hand backwards, feeling along the shallow trenches that had been torn through my flesh a so many years ago. I remembered how they had come to be there. It had been during the Depression. Before time had reshaped my body. After I had failed my species. It could have been worse. It had happened because I had not been careful enough, and because human vices, mostly hunger, had clouded my judgement. I had learned on that day that mankind could be just as ruthless as the Daleks had ever been.

They had wanted to kill me.

And they would have succeeded if they had not been interrupted, and I had been allowed to escape.

I had often wondered since whether I should have.

Did I really deserve to live, after all I had done?

I looked at my half human form, scars, blue eye, tentacles, bare brain; all.

Surely, this was better than being all Dalek?

It had to be worth it.

_Was _it worth it?

"Everything okay?" Eliza's voice called across the room. "You're taking your time. Do you need help?"

I tore my gaze away from my reflection.

"No. I am fine." I answered, my voice hoarse from lack of use. I picked up the clothes from the floor of the cubicle, stepped into the pants, and pulled the shirt over my head, covering the scar tissue.

I walked, stumbling a little, back out into the light of the warehouse. The patches of sunlight that stretched from the windows were overly bright and sharp, partly due to the drought and partly due to the poison that still blighted my senses.

Eliza had already broken the eggs into a bowl as I walked over to her.

"You're shirt's on backwards." She remarked, glancing at me.

"Does it matter if it is?"

"Not if you don't mind looking ridiculous." She passed the mixing bowl over to me, and placed a wooden spoon in my hand. "Knock yourself out. Not literally. You get what I mean."

As it turned out, I was actually better at creating omelettes than Eliza was. But this said very little, as the dish was relatively easy, and because Eliza generally hated preparing food and proud to say that she was the worst cook in America (another exaggeration on her part, but this time it had its grounding).

They were a little burned at the edges, but otherwise edible.

Eliza and I ate in silence. There was no usual requirement for either of us to speak.

But this morning it felt uncomfortable, not least because we felt unwell.

After I had finished my meal, I found myself staring at the nearly empty plate. Eliza had only eaten half of hers, and stirred a patch of fat around her plate with her chopstick (I was not permitted to own knives and forks).

"It is strange," I said at last, "how these things happen."

"How what things happen?" Eliza asked.

"How once I was the finest strategist in the history of the Dalek race, conqueror of the Mechanoids, the supreme leader of the Cult of Skaro. And now here I am, eating omelettes."

Eliza stared at me blankly, and then she began to snigger.

"What?" I demanded. "Does that amuse you?"

Eliza laughed, and I watched her, feeling too nonplussed to become angry.

"Yeah, a little." She laughed, shaking her head, her natural hair bouncing. Even though she was laughing, there was something melancholy about it. "Once I was an ordinary twenty-something living in a crappy little apartment with a blue-collar job. And here _I_ am, eating omelettes, with the former conqueror of the Mechanoids and supreme leader of the Cult of Skaro. Who has it worse?"

Despite myself, I began to grin, as Eliza leaned back, sighing and smiling that sad smile.

"So, this Déjà vu of yours," she began again, "what exactly was it about?"

"Oh. It was not Déjà vu. It was more similar to…a voice, I suppose."

"A voice." Eliza repeated. "In your head?"

I nodded. Eliza put down her chopsticks.

"Aha…that _is_ kind of worrying. What did it say?"

I was feeling incredibly tired. The food had been refreshing, but the transformation had taken more energy than I had expected.

"It said something about waiting. Somebody waiting, did not say for what or who. No. Wait. Remember that writing I saw last night? The writing that you could not see?"

I watched as Eliza narrowed her eyes, as if trying to remember, and then raised her eyebrows sceptically.

"You were drunk last night. You could have been seeing things, and this morning just have been hearing things."

"But I have seen it before. I have seen it _many_ times before. The same writing. It has been written all around the city; even under the Brooklyn Bridge. And always; it is the same words: _Can You Hear Them Waiting._ In white letters."

The traffic murmured as it rolled across the sun baked streets outside. My casing, placed in the corner of the room, was reflecting the light from the window; a sleeping metal demon. Across the table from me, Eliza bit her lip sceptically.

"Look; on each of those occasions, you were in your casing." She reasoned. "It could be a glitch."

Her logic was sound, but even years of being half human had not completely erased the other side of my nature. I did not like being doubted.

"I was not in my casing this morning. And still I heard those words."

"Well, you could have just been thinking them subconsciously. It could happen quite easily if you have been seeing this message as often as you say you have."

"But, Eliza, why those words?"

"Why any words?" Eliza was already too good at being lawyer.

I stood up, scrapping my stool back, and in doing so became dizzy once more. I put out a hand to steady myself. Eliza frowned, also rising to her feet. I did not want her help.

"Are you trying to tell me that I am going insane?" I snapped, and the edge in my own voice surprised me, worried me. Eliza looked taken aback.

"What? No! Quite the opposite. I'm telling you not to worry. It could just be a blip."

"But…I am afraid."

"_You're_ afraid?"

Now, an edge had crept into Eliza's voice. I looked up at her. Her eyes had sharpened.

"Sec, last night I was sick because I had a nightmare." She informed me. "I keep having flashbacks about Skaro. I've been trying to bottle it up, trying to live a normal life, not be needy, not rely on anyone, but all the while I'm terrified. And even little things like this babysitting job scare me shitless because I'm so worried that I will screw it up. But you're being kind of needy now, I'm sorry. You need to grow a thicker skin. I'm insane, you're insane; whatever. At least we both are."

She did not raise her voice, and somehow this gave more gravity to what she had said. She did not appear angry either, only tired.

Humbled, I lowered my gaze.

"I did not know that you were struggling." I mumbled. "Not like that."

Eliza sank onto her barstool again

"I guess I _am_ finding things a little difficult. Yeah."

"I used to have flashbacks." I reminded her. "They fade. It takes time, and they never go away completely, but they fade all the same. You are strong. You will prevail."

Eliza looked up at me with her round dark eyes.

"You think so?"

"I know so."

I seated myself on the barstool, feeling increasingly tired as my posture began to fall.

"You are probably right about the message being a malfunction." I told her consolingly. "I will run some diagnostics. And speaking of which," a wave of exhaustion had washed over me, "I think today will be a casing day after all."

"Fine. I don't blame you."

It was not long before I was closed inside my armoured shell, mollusc-like once more, and feeling my conscious drift away from my organic form, and into the computerised mind of the machine.

Across the room, in blue sepia, I saw Eliza dump her plate into the sink, and swing her bag over her shoulder. She was still so young. It pained me that she suffered the way she did, and I knew that I was responsible for this. Another crime to add to a long list.

"So, to the lab then?" She asked cheerily.

"AFFIRMATIVE."

She smiled roguishly.

"Is it me, or do you only speak like a geek when you're in your casing?"

"I DO NOT! WHAT IS A GEEK?"

"Someone who is annoyingly smart. Like you."

"LIKE YOU, YOU MEAN. YOU ARE AT COLLEGE."

"Touché. I'll take that as a compliment, then."

We made our way towards the goods elevator, Eliza waiting for me by the doors. She had already taken off her jacket due to the heat.

"I don't actually have any lectures today." She was telling me. "I'll be in the library. I can't revise at home. If you want to get lunch later, I'm totally up for it."

The prospect of a day in the laboratory was not a comforting one, but Eliza's offer was.

She was probably right, about the casing. It could just have been a malfunction. Yes; the logic was sound. It made perfect sense. And dreams, drunken thoughts, were little more than mismatched signals sparking uselessly around the mind.

Unless…

_Unless…_

"BAD WOLF." I said.

"Pardon?"

By now we were in the elevator, the concrete and wires sliding past us as it descended, and as I had spoken, Eliza had looked at me questioningly.

"BAD WOLF." I repeated.

No. Not that.

That phenomenon. London. The Tyler girl. What she did to us. To the Emperor. All at once, a thousand slaughters flew into my mind. The long forgotten knowledge of a power too great to comprehend. Too great to control.

What had I been wasting my time for in the last thirty years?

"What does Bad Wolf mean?" Eliza demanded. "Sec, you're freaking me out."

I turned my eye stalk so that I was looking right at her.

"DANGER."


	7. Chapter Six: The Fair Folk of New York

Chapter Six: The Fair Folk of New York

As the morning had worn on, the temperature rose to a staggering level. In every building the air conditioning units rumbled at full blast. Outside, the air in the streets was dry and filled with dust. Commuters sweated in their suits.

In a third floor studio, the windows had been thrown wide open, and the inhabitants of said studio moved sluggishly as a combination of the heat, the lack of sleep, and the crushing pressure of the afternoon deadline weighed down upon them. There was very little sound apart from the feverish tapping on the keys of Mac books, the whirring of sewing machines, the rustle of fabric and the occasional whispered curse.

Melanie Tan stood well away from the window, in the shadiest corner of the room, slipping the green day dress on which she had slaved for months onto the tailor's dummy. The long skirt poured gently from her hands, tumbling and swaying into perfect folds. She looked the design up and down, holding a hand to her mouth, pulling at the left shoulder so that it better fitted the mannequin. The table next to her was an ordered chaos. It was a wilderness of loose threads, sheets of paper showing templates and fabric samples, open notebooks, bobbins and computer wires.

Melanie took a step back, brushing a loose strand of her straight black hair behind her ear. _Almost done_.

She glanced over to the window. The sky outside was a merciless blue.

Thank god she was not standing in the sunlight. Heat made her sluggish at the best of times, and today, the sun could have been lethal to her concentration.

Luckily, everything was going well.

All she needed to do was to run the quality control checks, read over her essay one last time, and then put the designs ready for assessment.

In the meantime, she needed more coffee.

She left her workplace, slipping her handbag over her shoulder, and walked over to where her friend Dana was tapping furiously at her keyboard.

"I'm getting something to eat. Want anything?"

Dana looked up, smiling the sort of weary smile that trench soldiers might have given each other after a long march between camps. Her curly blonde hair was plastered to her forehead. Her dramatically thick framed green glasses lay on the table next to her. Her friend seemed to be visibly melting.

"I'm okay, actually. Can't really stop. How about you?"

"Nearly finished." Melanie reported.

Dana groaned quietly.

"You work criminally fast. How do you do it?"

"With difficulty. I need a break."

"Well, go ahead. Enjoy. Remember, five o'clock."

"How could I forget?"

With a warm smile, Melanie made her way towards the door, glancing back at Dana.

As she pushed in to the passage, the amulet that she wore around her neck slipped out from under her shirt. She tucked it quickly out of sight.

Nobody had noticed that despite the sweltering heat, Melanie was not sweating.

Out in the street, the sun was at its highest. It would have been heavenly, Melanie thought, if perhaps she had been on a sandy resort in Barbados. But here, while pushing her way through crowds of people, all similarly heated and bothered, it was not very pleasant at all. The stench of trash was almost too much to bear. The heat sizzled in a haze off the bonnets of passing vehicles.

Through the lenses of her enormous sunglasses, she could make out the sign for her favourite coffee bar. She could almost taste the rich, invigorating bitterness.

One latte, perhaps a gluten-free coconut muffin, and then she could get back to work.

Everything was going perfectly.

There was a commotion on the other side of the street. From the corner of her eye, Melanie noticed that the crowd seemed to be parting, some people stopping and looking behind them as they did. She peered over the traffic, curious.

A large dark shape, some sort of machine, was drifting along the sidewalk. It was apparently too large to accommodate passers-by, and Melanie caught glimpses of its black metal dome over the heads of the crowd.

She had seen it before.

Holding her breath, she decided to continue walking. Ignore it. Get into the coffee shop and pretend that it had simply not been there.

She had been afraid of the machine ever since she was a child. She did not know what it was, or where it had come from, but all she had known was that it was bad luck. There was a distinct air of malevolence that seemed to follow it everywhere it went.

Then her friend Eliza had told her that it was alive.

What had she called it? A Dollark or something. Something beginning with "d".

Dalek. That was it.

Suspicion and morbid fascination having gotten the better of her, Melanie reached the porch of the coffee bar, and risked a final glance at the Dalek creature.

It was making its way up the street, in the opposite direction to her, heading towards Fifth Avenue. Occasionally it swivelled its domed head, a pinprick of blue light glowing at the end of a gun-barrel like appendage which it directed at someone close by. If anthropomorphised, it could have been addressing somebody.

And that somebody, keeping pace with it with visible effort was…

"Eliza?" Melanie whispered in surprise.

Was she following it around?

Melanie glanced into the bustling interior of the bar, and then back down the street where her friend and the Dalek were headed. What were they doing? Had she not warned Eliza to stay away from that thing?

Melanie wondered if it really mattered. It was not her business to tell Eliza what not to do, no matter how eccentric. Besides; the smell of coffee wafted from the open door of the shop as a perfect antidote to the reek of the street.

None the less, she glanced at her watch. It was a good few hours before she needed to finish. If anything, she had extra time.

Curiosity was stronger than coffee.

If Eliza was following the sinister contraption, then she knew what it was. It was a mystery that Melanie herself had always been too preoccupied, and sensible to pursue.

Now, however, she had the chance.

Melanie swallowed, making her decision. She dismounted the step up to the door, and made her way over to the traffic lights, crossing the streets in pursuit.

ELIZA:

"For the five-hundredth and final time, what the hell does Bad Wolf mean?"

Sec was moving with surprising speed towards Fifth Avenue. As soon as the elevator had reached the ground floor at the warehouse, the Dalek had shot off across town before I could stop him. The only thing I could do was follow, partly running as he glided across the sidewalks, zigzagging past blocks, and generally being unhelpful.

Finally, he had begun to slow, letting me catch up.

"THERE IS VERY LITTLE TIME." He told me. "I SHALL ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN, BUT NOT HERE."

"Well I don't see why not. You've drawn enough attention to us as it is!"

I looked over my shoulder at the sea of withdrawn phones and cameras from pedestrians. I was used to the Dalek attracting stares, but usually it was on our daily route to the college. There were security cameras around, and if any forces, including the FBI or U.N.I.T

We turned the corner, and came under the cover of a tunnel of scaffolding. It forced the Dalek and I to walk in single file as people filtered past us. Some people shot Sec looks of annoyance. One guy in a baseball cap exclaimed angrily.

I bit my tongue and kept walking in a straight line.

The heat of the day was not helping. I had tied my denim jacket around my waist, and wondered grumpily why I had bothered to wear it at all. It would have been too hot even if I had been sitting still.

But the Dalek was coming to a halt.

"FIRSTLY, WE NEED TO GO IN THERE." He told me, his eyestalk pointing upwards. I followed his gaze.

He was focussing on the building across the street. I took in the browning concrete, the hundreds of feet of it that rose up into the sky throwing the street below into shadow

"In there?" I repeated sceptically.

"AFFIRMATIVE."

"The Empire State Building?"

"CORRECT."

Ahead of us, the landmark towered over us, rising up and up into the sky. Its thousands of windows glittered blindingly in the sunlight.

"I see…" I raised a hand, shading my eyes. "Any reason why?"

Sec did not answer. Instead, he turned left down the next street, signalling that he wished me to follow.

"Don't we need to cross here? The entrance is that way." I called after him. But the machine was making its way across the tiles, past parked vehicles, vendors and away down the sidewalk. Biting my lip, I paced after him.

He led me past a gaudy souvenir store, a Delicatessen, a donut place, and a burger bar. It was at the next shop front, which appeared to be empty, that the black Dalek came to a halt.

We were opposite the vehicle depot of the skyscraper.

"THROUGH HERE." He explained, lowering the volume of his voice and indicating the shop.

Newsprint had been taped over its windows, and beyond that I could make out the emptied interior.

Without checking to see if the coast was clear, Sec raised his plunger, and affixed it over the lock of the entrance. There was a clunking sound at the mechanism opened.

He pushed the door, opening it wider as he slid through, and shaking my head I followed him. I doubted that anybody was really going to stop us now, or that anybody who owned the shop would be around.

The air within the store smelled of sawdust. The beige tiles underneath us were dusted with a thin snowy layer of plaster. The wires from the light fittings hung dangerously from the ceiling.

I looked around, taking in a steadying breath. Nobody was going to hear us. I felt I was owed an explanation to whatever madness that had seized him.

"Wait a minute Sec."

Sec was crossing the shop floor. He looked too large, too military against the bare boards of the walls and the low ceiling of the old shop.

"THERE IS A MAINTAINANCE HATCH THROUGH HERE. I LOCATED IT TWO YEARS AGO. IT WILL TAKE US UNDERGROUND, BENEATH THE BASEMENT OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. WE CANNOT TAKE THE MAIN ENTRANCE AS THE ELEVATOR NO LONGER-"

"No." I interrupted, folding my arms. "Wind back a bit, please. Just tell me what Bad Wolf means."

As soon as he had begun to spout those words almost an hour ago, I had half expected him to shoot me dead begin a killing spree, reverting back to the more antisocial part of Dalek nature.

But the two words made no sense. What could Bad Wolf mean? Like, the Big Bad Wolf? Little Red Riding Hood, or the Three Little Pigs? Either it was a code, or Sec was having a Grimm-themed malfunction.

I stood with my arms crossed over my chest, and cordially halted. He swept the room furtively with his eye stalk, as if checking that nobody was listening to us. Then, he began to speak, saying the words quickly in his grating voice.

"ONCE," he began, "MANY YEARS AGO IN MY TIME, I MET A HUMAN NAMED ROSE TYLER. SHE HAD TRAVELED IN TIME, AS THE COMPANION TO THE DOCTOR. SHE HAD SEEN MANY OF THE WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE, MET MANY SPECIES, FOUGHT WITH MANY CREATURES, AND SAVED MANY MORE."

"The Doctor? Who's that?"

Sec paused, narrowing his lens. It was as if he had not wanted to be interrupted, especially on this particular point.

"A FORMER ENEMY." He explained, a little too quickly. "HE TRAVELS TIME AND SPACE, MOSTLY ALONE, BUT SOMETIMES HE HAS BEEN KNOWN TO TRAVEL WITH ACCOMPLICES. THIS TYLER GIRL WAS ONE OF SUCH COMPANIONS. ROSE TYLER WAS THE BAD WOLF."

I nodded, making a mental note of the Daleks brevity on the subject. The Doctor. I tried to remember it.

"THE BAD WOLF WAS A NAME THAT SHE GAVE TO HERSELF WHEN SHE STARED INTO THE TIME VORTEX."

A hissing filled the room, and I stood back a little as Sec swung open.

"THE TIME VORTEX IS THE PASSAGE IN WHICH IT IS POSSIBLE TO TRAVERSE HISTORY AND THE FAR REGIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. TO STARE INTO IT, LET ALONE COME INTO CONTACT WITH IT, CAN HAVE DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES."

The real Sec, in his green mutant form, which sat it comfortably hungover bliss within the nest of wires and machines, raised its tentacles to gesture at itself.

"HENCE WHY I REGAINED THIS FORM." With a mechanical whirr, the casing swung closed again. "BUT BY STARING INTO IT, THE TYLER GIRL ABSORBED AN ASTRONOMICAL AMOUNT OF ENERGY. IT GAVE HER THE POWER TO TURN AN ENTIRE FLEET TO DUST, TO REDUCE OUR EMPEROR TO ATOMS. SHE COULD HAVE BURNED WHOLE PLANETS, AND THE POWER COULD HAVE TORN HER APPART. BUT SHE WAS SAVED."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Hah. Well, that's lucky."

"YES. YOU MAY WISH TO KNOW HOW THIS IS RELEVANT, I UNDERSTAND."

"Yes, I do. I really do because this is kind of a lot to take in."

"WELL," Sec began to drive back and forth across the empty store, as if pacing. "THIS EVENT HAD BEEN FORESHADOWED BY HERSELF. ROSE TYLER WAS ABLE TO SPREAD THE WORDS "BAD WOLF" ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, AS A MESSAGE TO HER PAST SELF, INFORMING HER AS TO WHAT SHE HAD TO DO TO DESTROY US. AND RECENTLY, I HAVE SEEN SIMILAR MESSAGES AROUND THE CITY. ONLY I AM ABLE TO SEE THEM."

A shiver rushed along my skin. It was easy to dismiss everything he had aid as fantasy. But Sec rarely spoke nonsense.

"So you think, that it could be her? Or that somebody else has that power?"

"IT IS A POSSIBLITY."

"That's kind of scary."

"IT IS."

I thought of the entire human race being reduced to particles. When I was in high school, we had been made to watch a documentary on the destruction of Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. What had followed had given me nightmares. Hiroshima consumed by flame, by light that turned men to ash and shadows. The injured and burning crushing each other in an attempt to find water. Black rain, endless bleeding, death.

This would be bigger. The entire planet, turned to ash, like Skaro. Genocide on a global scale.

"But as I said," I tried to reason, "it could just be a malfunction in your casing. You could be misreading the whole situation."

"THAT IS ALSO TRUE." Sec admitted, sounding wretched. "BUT I NEED TO BE SURE. I MUST SCAN THE SKIES. IT MAY NOT BE TOO LATE. SUCH A GREAT ENERGY FLUXATION WILL EASILY BE DETECTED."

Outside the traffic rumbled noisily. Past the paper the covered the windows, I could see people walking past, paying us no attention, getting on with day to day life. It was a world away from the nightmares that I was being painted.

"Okay then." I sighed. "The end of the world. So, what does this have to do with the Empire State Building again?"

Sec ceased his perpetual motion.

"YOU WILL SEE."

He turned swiftly and pushed his way into the back room, and I followed him as he led me through a cramped storage space, and then out of a back exit. We made our way out into a tiny, dirty little yard, the sky above us little more than a square. Weeds sprouted from cracks in the asphalt, cigarette butts had been crushed into the ground, and bird droppings stained the brick walls around us.

The yard was mostly taken up by a very large rusted maintenance hatch.

I waited at the door, disgusted.

"Oh no. I am _not_ going down there!"

"I DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO ACCOMPANY ME." Sec told me earnestly. "BUT YOU _COULD_ HOLD THE HATCH OPEN FOR ME SO THAT I MAY DESCEND."

"Sec, you're getting in through the sewers?!"

"NOT THE SEWERS. A STORM DRAIN."

The Dalek reached innocently out with his plunger, and there was a clunking sound as the hatch became unlocked.

I occurred to me that this must have been where the Dalek had been going when he explored the city at night, much to the irritation of Denise.

What the hell.

I stooped to retie my right bootlace, then walked into the yard.

"Hold on. I'm coming with you. At least if we are seen, I can say that I was escorting you."

Sec hesitated.

I stopped, looking at him incredulously.

"Well? If everything you just said is true, then we'd better get a move on. What's the matter?"

"YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO ACCOMPANY ME." He repeated.

"Come on. It'll take more than a couple of rats to scare me off."

But Sec was raising and lowering his eyestalk, as if avoiding my gaze. In the shade of the building, he suddenly appeared apprehensive.

"ELIZA. WHAT I MEAN IS, I WOULD _PREFER_ IT IF YOU DID NOT ACCOMPANY ME."

I was about to ask why, when a creak emanated from the storage space behind us.

In an instant, Sec had swung around, aiming both weapon and plunger at the exit.

"WE ARE BEING OBSERVED!" He hissed. His voice became little more than a scratchy whisper, and I spun around too, my heart leaping.

Someone was in the empty store. Sec had not thought to lock the door behind us. We glanced at each other, and I peered past the doorframe.

"Hello?" I called. "Is there anybody there?"

There came no answer.

Leaving Sec waiting behind me, I took a cautious step into the storage room. The door back into the store was swinging closed, as if somebody had tried to open it, and then let it fall shut again.

Shuffling silently, I approached it, and pushed it open again, peering into the shop front. It was empty.

I glanced round the corner.

"Uh, hello." Said the well-dressed figure who had pressed herself to the wall, raising her hand in an awkward wave.

I jumped, and automatically clapped my hand to my heart.

"Melanie?! What the hell are you doing here?"

Melanie, as this was indeed the perpetrator of my near heart attack, dropped her hiding stance and raised her chin defiantly.

"I think I could easily ask you the same question." She answered curtly.

Melanie Tan looked tired, more worn out than when I had last seen her. Of course, it was exam season. Her long black hair, perfectly straight, was tied back in a practical ponytail. She wore no makeup, and so it was easy to see the bags under her eyes. She wore a layered vest and a pair of high wasted shorts. A small green and black handbag swung from the crook of her elbow.

Apparently, she had been following us in high heels.

I straightened up, still feeling shocked.

"Right, on any other occasion I would have been happy to see you." I told her, wanting my voice to warm. "But you happened to be following us like a creepy stalker, so I'm a little bit perplexed. Why were you following us?"

Melanie shrugged sarcastically.

"I don't know. Maybe because _you_ were following a surreal alien machine and breaking and entering? I saw the two of you two blocks back. You're still hanging around with that thing? I thought I'd warned you not to?"

Her narrow brown eyes focused on me warningly. I remembered what I had seen in them last time we had met.

"It's my job. I get paid, actually, to hang around with that thing."

I remembered that Sec was still waiting in the yard. It gave me an idea.

"In fact," I added, "I don't think the two of you have been properly acquainted yet. Come out and meet him."

"Now wait a sec-"

But I had already taken Melanie by the hand, and was leading her, despite her protests, through to the back yard. The Dalek was waiting, dominating the small space. His lens widened in surprise as I pulled my old friend out into the light.

"Right." I announced. "Dalek Sec, this is Melanie Tan. Melanie Tan, Dalek Sec."

Melanie stumbled away from my grip, a look of alarm on her face, and stared at the Dalek as if he was about to self-destruct. The Dalek, for his part, drew back from her. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, as my two friends studied one another suspiciously.

"You remember Sec, don't you?" I said to Melanie when neither of them spoke. "You always seemed to be scared of him. But he's kind of a softie once you get to know him."

Melanie stood paralysed, her arms raised in defence.

"And Sec, this is the friend I was telling you about. We go way back."

Apparently, my words of comfort were falling on deaf ears. The pair stood, sizing each other up. It was incredibly awkward to watch.

"WHY WERE YOU FOLLOWING US?" Sec barked. Melanie let out a little scream. The spell was broken. "EXPLAIN!"

"It-it…it can talk!" She squeaked, pointing at him.

"_IT?_" The Dalek boomed indignantly. "I AM NO MERE MACHINE, HUMAN!"

"Now hold on-" I tried to butt in, but Melanie spoke first.

"Oh God, there's something alive in there, isn't there? You said there was!"

"Well, yeah. It's no biggie, he's kind of-"

"ELIZA, THIS SO CALLED FRIEND OF YOURS IS MANNERLESS AS WELL AS A STALKER!"

"I was _not_ stalking you!" Now it was Melanie's turn to become indignant, as she straightened up to her full height. "I was just checking to see that my friend was okay, and not being murdered by a killer robot!"

"Oh God." I muttered. This was not going as well as I had anticipated.

Sec had begun to encircle Melanie slowly, and Melanie for her part stood poised, ready, like a snake ready to strike.

"IS THAT SO?" Sec buzzed, his voice becoming sinisterly quiet. "IF YOU CARED SO MUCH ABOUT YOUR FRIEND, YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN HERE TO SUPPORT HER! SHE IS UNWELL AND CLAIMS THAT SHE REQUIRES MORE…" he paused, his eyestalk looking her up and down "…_HUMAN_ COMPANY."

"What even?" I protested weakly, unable to believe what I was hearing. I completely missed the reaction Melanie took to those words, letting out a severe little gasp as if she had been stung. It had gone on long enough.

I pushed my way between the two of them.

"Look, will you both stop?! Melanie, if you did this because you cared then I appreciate it, but I'd rather you had just called me or something. And you!" I turned to the Dalek. "You have no right to bring my mental wellbeing into this! Stop acting like a child."

Sec lowered his eyestalk, having the grace at least to appear embarrassed.

Melanie straightened her ponytail, still glaring at the Dalek.

"Fine. I'm sorry. But what _are_ you both doing anyway?"

"That's what I've been trying to find out all morning." I responded.

Sec moved once more over to the maintenance hatch, still focusing his gaze on my friend.

"IT WAS _CONFIDENTIAL_." He announced, placing emphasis on the last word. "I CANNOT TRUST HER."

"You can trust her." I said quickly, and knelt down to lift the hatch. It was staggeringly heavy, but once I had lifted it so far, Sec reached out with his plunger and helped me pivot it upwards. It swung back with a clunk. Melanie watched disapprovingly.

"Are you allowed to do that?" She asked scornfully.

"Probably not. It won't stop me though."

"You're crazy."

"CORRECT."

I peered down into the swallowing darkness below. In the daylight, I was able to see a rusty ladder leading down into the hole and vanishing into the black.

"I WILL TAKE THE LEAD." Sec announced. "UNDERSTAND HOWEVER THAT I WOULD RATHER GO ALONE."

I stood back as he drifted towards the hatch, and blue light flooded out from underneath him as he began to hover. I looked over at Melanie to see her expression of astonishment.

"You're not seriously going down there are you Eliza? What if that thing kills you down there?"

Sec turned his eyestalk on her haughtily.

"I HAVE HAD PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITIES TO MURDER ELIZA IN THE PAST. NOTE THAT I HAVE NOT TAKEN THEM, NO MATTER HOW ANNOYING SHE BECOMES."

With that, he began to descend into the hole. But Melanie was not moving.

"Yeah, I'm following him." I told her. "So, are you just going to hang around out here, or do you have something else to do?"

If I sounded rude, it was half intentional. My friend had not spoken to me in so long, and now that she was, I felt she was interfering. What did she know about my life anymore? About the Dalek? About anything?

"I'm supposed to be finishing my final essay, actually." She responded. And then, she began to take of her shoes, standing on one foot and withdrawing a pair of roll-up pumps from her bag. I raised an eyebrow?

"Seriously? You're coming too? And in _those shoes_?"

"Well, they're better than the heels."

"But your essay?"

"I have another five hours. I'm not letting you go down there alone with that thing."

I shook my head in disbelief. There was little point in protesting though. If Sec's theory carried as much urgency as he had implied, then we had wasted enough time already.

"Okay, whatever. Just don't break an ankle. And I don't know what's down there. He won't like you following us."

"And if it doesn't want _you_ to go with it, then why are you following him?" Melanie asked.

I decided not to answer, and mounted the ladder. An icy chill rose up from the tunnel below. The mechanical whining of the Dalek's casing filled the passage. As I descended into the ground, Melanie mounted the ladder above me and began, carefully, to follow us into the depths of the earth.

It was incredibly cold compared with summer heat of the surface. Our path was lit by little more than the dim blue glow that emanated from Sec. What little sound there was consisted of a cacophony of subtleties: the clanging of our feet on the ladder, our breathing, and a deep, sinister rumble from below. This was the roar of the subway trains that crisscrossed the underground.

Very soon, I decided not to breathe through my nose.

After what felt like an age I saw the concrete floor illuminated by the blue light, and gladly set my feet on solid ground. Sec was waiting, looking up at Melanie sceptically.

"WHY HAS SHE COME?" He demanded, his voice echoing thunderously in the spacious dark.

"Because I wanted to." Melanie answered him primly. "And because you seem like a psychopath and I think I need to keep my friend here in check."

"Oh thanks Mel."

Melanie dropped from the ladder with a soft thump.

"I hate the name Mel." She told me darkly. "I thought you knew that."

Sec watched her for a moment, and then seemed to accept her.

"FINE. BUT DO NOT SLOW US DOWN. WE HAVE TO GO DEEPER. I DO NOT PERMIT THE TWO OF YOU TO ARGUE."

I shrugged my jacket back onto my shoulders, suddenly glad for it. Melanie stood next to me, rubbing her arms.

We followed Sec, keeping close behind him, as he flooded the passage with his eerie blue glow.

The ceiling was very low from what I could see, the head of the Dalek only just missing the roof of it. It was made entirely out of concrete, and yet was irregular in shape, like a burrow.

The ground was not wet, but contained little more than a clinging muddy residue, thanks to the lack of rain. There was a pattering sound that echoed around the tunnel, and my fears were confirmed as the shaggy form of a rat ran passed the Dalek and streaked past our feet. I had expected Melanie to scream, but she had become strangely quiet.

"You okay?" I whispered to her.

"I'm fine. I just can't believe I'm doing this."

I would have answered the same, but in light of all I had seen and done in the past year, this barely surprised me.

"Do you do this kind of thing a lot?" Melanie asked, raising her voice a little. I smiled to myself.

"Increasingly so, I guess."

Sec, who had been glancing behind him as if to check on us began to speak, his bulbs illuminating the space further in lightning bursts.

"THE TUNNELS EXTEND UNDER ALMOST EVERY PART OF THE ISLAND. I HAVE BEEN TRAVERSING AND CHARTING THEM BY NIGHT. IT IS POSSIBLE TO REACH ALMOST ANY PART OF MANHATTAN WITHOUT EVER GOING ABOVE THE SURFACE, IF YOU KNOW THE WAY."

Our route went on, as we passed underground weirs, now bone dry, twisted round corners, and mounted yet more ladders, some consisting of little more than iron rings set into the wall, to descend deeper and deeper into the bowels of the city. We spoke little, as the secrecy of our mission seemed to demand silence. Melanie, for one, was following us stoically, not uttering a single word. She walked mostly at my side, shoulders hunched, hugging herself, her eyes focused on the ground.

Why had she really decided to come? Why, after so many months of silence, had she suddenly made it her business to be with me? And, why here, why now, in the obscurest of settings? Her presence bothered me, as whatever Sec needed to investigate felt like something important, and to have a former high-school friend accompanying us seemed inconvenient.

We made our way down what was to be the final ladder, where Sec stopped at the bottom, looking up at us.

"WE ARE HERE." He announced.

Melanie and I glanced at each other, and I hopped off the last rung, my feet echoing into the darkness.

"Where in the world is-"

But I caught my breath as we entered what, on first glance, looked like an underground cathedral.

Concrete pillars rose upwards, vanishing into the gloom, caught by the eerie blue glow that emanated from Sec. His light was reflected in the enormous puddles that lay across the ground. The space was cool, every sound reverberated, and in the darkness it could have gone on forever.

I felt movement as Melanie caught up behind me, walking by my shoulder. I could tell that she was just as amazed as I was.

"What is this place?" She whispered.

We were temporarily blinded as Sec rotated his dome to talk to us.

"WE ARE NOW DIRECTLY UNDER THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING." He explained. "THOSE PILLARS SUPPORT ABOUT THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THOUSAND TONS OF METAL AND CONCRETE. THIS CHAMBER WAS NOT AN ORIGINAL PART OF THE CONSTRUCTION."

I looked upwards with a pang of anxiety.

A patch of water rippled as the Dalek passed over it, gliding far ahead of us. To me, it seemed as though he had become tense. There was something here that made Sec uncomfortable. I could not blame him. But I felt it had little to do with the fact that we were so deep underground, that the space was so huge, or that it was so dark.

"So, this place has been here all this time?" Melanie remarked, her words thick with unease. "I've been up the building at least five times as a kid. Not sure I'd be so keen knowing…"

"That there was a temple underneath it?" I finished for her, gazing at the pillars.

"Mausoleum more like."

There was a hissing sound, followed by a clunk, and we blinked as one by one, enormous lights snapped into life, illuminating the space with an orange glare.

Sec waited by an old fashioned throw switch that had been set into the wall. The cavern was not as large as we had previously thought, but stretched upwards more than along. We must have been deeper underground than I had expected.

I walked into the centre of the columns with a rising feeling of unease. Everything was covered with dust, strewn about the floor, broken with age and by flooding, but the individual items, their general purpose, spoke volumes.

Long lab benches lay either side of me, with rotted legs, the vials and beakers that they once held smashed into powder, their surfaces dusty. Something crunched under my boot, and I lifted my foot to see a syringe, its needle red with rust.

Melanie and I passed through the space as one would a strange museum. Machines, hefty and irregular in shape stood beyond, their dome-shaped switches and glass hexagonal design horribly familiar to me. They were soiled by age and neglect. Wires and cables hung purposefully from the ceiling, and as I followed them with my eyes, in the darkness above I caught sight of rectangular shapes, many hundreds of them, that hung high above us in a ghostly fashion. The air stank of must, of dirt, and of the sewer, but below it all was another scent, something wrong. It was the smell I had noticed that night at the docks in Brooklyn, the first time I had met the hybrid face to face.

Sec drew up next to me, approaching slowly to stand at my side. He was not a cold piece of machinery. Like another human I could almost sense his feelings. He was ashamed. He was afraid of what we would think. Melanie and I exchanged glances, and I saw that her face was full of questions. She had no idea what this place was, what it could be.

But I knew.

The tunnels had been just the right shape and size for a Dalek to traverse with relative ease. It was almost as if it had been designed for them. Or by them.

"The Cult of Skaro." I stated, looking Sec straight in the eye. "This was where you did those experiments, wasn't it?"

Sec tried to look away.

"CORRECT." He confirmed.

"This was where you became _you_, isn't it? Where you became half human?"

"YES."

"This was your laboratory."

"…AFFIRMATIVE."

Melanie was looking from me to the Dalek, shaking her head in confusion.

"What are you talking about? This was a lab? A lab for what?"

Sec drove past me, eyestalk focussed on the ground. He was avoiding our gaze. I could feel myself tensing up inside.

"THIS WAS OUR TRANSGENIC LABORATORY, YES." He repeated. "THIS WAS WHERE THE FINAL EXPERIMENT TOOK PLACE. IT WAS OUR MILITARY BASE, AND MY ONLY SANCTURY FOR THREE YEARS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION. IT WAS THE PLACE OF MY GREATEST FAILURE."

Melanie turned to me. Her arms were coated in goose pimples, and in the light of the tomb-like cavern, she looked incredibly pale.

"What…was the final experiment?" She asked nervously. Glancing at the hybrid Dalek, I spoke in a low voice. She had chosen to come, and she had seen so much already. Why should she not know?

"Well, a long time ago, back in the 1930s, four Daleks, a group called the Cult of Skaro, became stranded here in New York. They were the last four left in the universe, and Sec here was there leader. The Daleks were basically like…the Nazis I guess. Bent on power, bent on domination, and bent on purity. And, naturally they made a lot of enemies and were wiped out, except for the Cult."

Melanie nodded curtly. As she had made no reply I was about to go on, but I was interrupted by Sec.

"OUR PHILOSOPHY HAD DRIVEN US TO EXTINCTION." He explained. He did not shout. His tone had become strangely quiet. "SO I DECIDED THAT WE NEEDED TO CHANGE. TO EVOLVE. TO LEAVE BEHIND OUR DESTRUCTIVE WAYS AND LEAVE OUR CASINGS."

"They began…" I glanced upwards at the white shapes suspended above us, "They began to do experiments. Splicing DNA."

Melanie curled her lip in disgust. A shudder was going down my spine. I did not want to go on. I had known for a long time what Sec had done. Part of me had tried not to believe it. But standing in the place where it happened, it suddenly felt real. I looked coldly at the Dalek, seeing him in a light that I had wanted to avoid for so long.

"They used pigs, mostly. Pigs were cheap. And, they were famously similar to…"

Melanie swallowed.

"To the apes." She finished.

I hesitated. I had expected her to be horrified, but her choice of language took me by surprise. The apes? She had meant humans, surely?

"Humans. Yes."

"Thinking, breathing people? Men and women?"

"Yeah. I know."

There was no need to say anymore.

Melanie took a step backwards. She did not say anything more. But I knew that she wanted to be gone. And the look of fury that she was giving me, as well as the hybrid, was sickening to behold.

There was the sound of fabric shifting, and I turned to see Sec reversing, pulling a rotted burlap covering away from something large, set between two pillars at the end of the manmade, or rather, Dalek made cavern. It came away, dragging across the floor, and underneath was a larger consul, glowing Skarovian hexagons surrounding an assortment of dials and switches. It was antiquated, a combination of twentieth-century and alien technology.

"THE MILITARY COMPUTER." Sec explained quietly. "IT CAN BE CONNECTED WITH THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS OF THE BUILDING'S SPIRE. IT CAN BE USED TO SCAN SATELLITES. IF THERE IS AN ENERGY SPIKE, CAUSED BY THE BAD WOLF, THEN I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DETECT IT."

In light of what I had seen, I had forgotten our original reason for coming here. He knew it. I looked back at Melanie, who was breathing hard, taking steps back.

"So he made himself part human after those experiments?" She guessed, glaring the Dalek with a burning fury.

"He did." I explained. I walked over to her, holding out my hands. "Look, Melanie, don't be like that. It's okay. He wouldn't-"

"You're trying to defend him?" Melanie's voice rose into a shout. It echoed around the broken lab, causing Sec to turn his dome, not quite meeting either of us in the eye. "If Hitler was still alive, you wouldn't defend him would you? If he was still alive, we'd have shot him in the head anyway! We would have had him executed! Criminals are punished. So tell me, why is _that thing_ still here? And why are you sticking with him, like he's your twisted little pet or something? Eliza, have you gone insane?"

I swallowed, trying to find a way to reason with her, but it was becoming difficult. Suddenly I felt sick.

"No, Melanie. Trust me." I began, but my words were faltering. I was no longer sure whether I believed in them anymore. "I know him. The creature…the person that he became after that; I don't think he would have done any of those things."

"Oh. But after how many had to suffer first?" Melanie spat. I faltered. "What are we doing here Eliza?"

I looked over my shoulder where Sec was stood. He was between the pillars, next to the military computer, focussing on me with a look that could have been pleading, could have been hatred; could have been anything. A cold sensation was crawling up my throat.

"I don't know." I admitted.

Sec looked away.

He said quietly, "IT WAS A MISTAKE TO LET YOU COME TO THIS PLACE."

I gazed around the cavern, feeling hollow.

"Yeah. Maybe."

"ELIZA. MELANIE. I AM SO SORRY."

There was a long silence. The deep sounds of the belly of the city shook through the walls above us. The shapes above us, which I realised were once gurneys, holding human subjects, swayed in a current of air.

"IT WILL BE ALRIGHT, THOUGH." Sec protested, hopefully. "TRUST ME, THIS IS IMPORTANT. WE ARE IN DANGER NOW, AND WE CAN FIND OUT WHY. WE CAN PREVENT IT. I CAN BE REDEEMED."

The little black Dalek looked tiny in the laboratory, tiny against those pillars, tiny with the military computer behind him.

"PLEASE UNDERSTAND. I DID WHAT I DID BECAUSE IT WS MY PURPOSE. WE WERE DESPERATE. I DID NOT KNOW THE HARM I WAS CAUSING, THERE WAS NO WAY I COULD HAVE. I DID NOT HURT FOR PLEASURE, LIKE THE CHIEF INQUISITOR OR THE EMPEROR. I CAUSED PAIN BECAUSE I KNEW NO DIFFERENT."

I was already walking away from him, to where Melanie waited, arms crossed.

"No. Of course not. I believe you." I did not hide my contempt. Was Melanie right? I no longer knew what to think. Suddenly, all I wanted was to be away from that filthy place. Away from that creature.

"ELIZA. BELIEVE ME. WE ARE IN DANGER. I CAN HELP."

I glanced at him one more time.

"Just tell us how we get out, Sec."

There was a pause. Sec stared at me, his lens wide. In all its mechanicalness, it suddenly looked more human than ever. It was wretched, betrayed. I wondered, passingly, if he was about to fire. Kill us both, down here in the dark.

"THERE IS A STAIRCASE." He said in a voice so tiny that it was barely Dalek at all.

Looking ahead, I saw the decrepit doors to the old elevator, and next to it, through a circular arch, a shadowed stairwell.

"Thank you."

I made my way towards it, my feet splashing in the pools of water.

Melanie hung behind.

SEC:

Eliza turned, and left the laboratory.

I was left alone, back where it had all begun.

But the Liar was holding back.

Eliza had known what I was, what I had done for a long time now. Now she had seen the evidence, ventured into that sordid cavern, and the poisonous history that clung to the place like tar had polluted what was left of our friendship.

_She needed to see_, I told myself, as I turned back to the military computer, and swung open my casing, feeling the stale air cold on my moist skin.

_She needed to know. She needs to be with her own kind, you know that. Perhaps she shall return to you, perhaps she shall not. Now concentrate on the task before you. Find the warning sign before it is too late. _

I reached up with my front tentacles, and pulled the connecting nodes down from the ancient consul. They were free from rust. Still usable. I reached out with my plunger, pressing the activation switch.

Behind me, there came the sound of footsteps as Melanie, if that was really her name (the Liar), began to walk away.

I had not said anything, not while Eliza was around. It was clear to me that this person was dear to her. But now the Liar and I were alone.

"I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE MELANIE." I said calmly, still working on the wires. The footsteps stopped.

"…I don't know what you mean." Melanie answered. Her words trembled, she was still angry. But there was fear underneath it too. Understandable really.

I rotated my dome.

A ghost image of the thing that was not a young woman appeared before my eyes, feedback from the camera. She stood motionless, impractically dressed, her dark almond eyes black in her pale face.

"YOU CANNOT HIDE THE TRUTH FROM ME. I KNEW FROM THE MOMENT I SAW YOU. WHY DO YOU LIE? WHY WEAR THE SKIN OF ANOTHER?"

Melanie narrowed her eyes.

"What are you talking about? Why don't you just leave us alone?"

"IT IS AN IMPRESSIVE FAÇADE THOUGH. I WILL ADMIT THAT. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN HARMING YOU, OR EXPOSING YOU. UNLESS…"

I rotated my open casing to face her, and Melanie backed away, horrified as she saw my true form.

"UNLESS YOU WISH TO HARM MY FRIEND."

It seemed for a moment, that Melanie was about to run, deny my words.

But instead, I watched, satisfied, as her features began to relax.

"So you really do know." It was as if a mask had fallen away. "I find it quite a relief that somebody does, finally."

If I had had an eyebrow to raise, I would have.

"WHY ARE YOU HERE?"

Melanie shrugged. She seemed almost relaxed now, although the burning hatred had not faded.

"Same reason why a lot of people are here, probably. For a better life. America is nothing short of a nation of immigrants. Why not my family too?"

"THEN YOU MEAN US NO HARM. YOUR SPECIES HAS BEEN KNOWN TO BE AGGRESSIVE TO HUMANS IN THE PAST."

"That's rich coming from you."

"APPARENTLY."

Melanie swallowed looking me up and down, her nose wrinkled. Her pupils were not round, but oval, like those of a cat. She reached under her shirt, and withdrew a cord that hung around her neck. She lifted it to show me, and I saw the medallion on the end. It looked like a simple square of hammered copper, with an intricate labyrinthine design engraved into it.

"My grandfather made it when my parents left Japan, knowing that one day they may want a child. They lived in Brazil for ten years before they had me in Delaware. I've been wearing it my whole life. I don't even know what it is to be what I am, not fully. My parents wanted a better future for us. Living here was the best option. And you dare to ask me if _I_ wish to harm anybody?"

Her logic was sound, and I realised that for all her deceit, Melanie was harmless. I pulled the wires down, plugging them into my casing.

"I WILL NOT REVEAL YOUR SECRET." I informed her. "I BELIEVE HOWEVER THAT ELIZA HAS A RIGHT TO KNOW. I DO NOT HIDE FROM HER, AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU."

Melanie lowered the medallion back under her shirt, tossing her illusionary straight black ponytail over her shoulder and looking around the laboratory.

"And who are you to preach of morals?" She answered bitterly.

Melanie turned, following the path of her friend, mounting the stairs and vanishing out of sight.

I watched her leave. What was I to make of her? Did it matter? She was no threat to us.

I turned my mind back to the task. The lab was cold, lonely. A hateful place. I wished that Eliza had stayed, even though now that was impossible. Without her I was afraid. And if there was any danger, I needed her to know. She could warn people better than I could.

As the computer activated, I felt a familiar sensation, like a tingling in the mind, wash over me. I closed my eye. Let my conciseness travel. Out of my body, out of my shell, into the aerials many hundreds of metres above me, and then out beyond, to cloud with binary, numbers, as it rushed across the stars, the galaxies, places in which I had once ventured long ago, to wage war, and beyond them, into the blackness.

The infinite landscape.

But in all of infinity…

Nothing.

No energy flux. No Bad Wolf.

Only empty darkness.

ELIZA:

I kept my head bent low, making my way silently up the echoing stairs. I had had enough. It was time to go.

At first, the stairs had been built of uneven brick, like the sewer below, but as I ascended they began to become even, the passage squarer.

There came the echoing of footsteps behind me, and I stopped as Melanie rounded the corner out of the shadows. I had been so lost in my thoughts that I had not noticed that she had hung back. Not that it mattered so much. I did not feel like talking to anybody too much.

Still, I waited for her to climb up to my level.

"Thought the last thing you'd want to do is to stay back there." I remarked blankly. Melanie had folded her arms again. She looked shocked, and I did not blame her. "He didn't bother you did he?"

"What, that thing? No. I left as fast as I could."

_Not fast enough though_, it occurred to me. But I made no comment.

We were silent, following the gritty stairs, until it ended on a small landing, a wide, windowless door waiting for us.

"So you knew about this?" Melanie snapped, as I pulled at the door, then flipped the lock.

"I guess I did, yeah." I admitted.

We pushed through the door and found ourselves in a dingy breezeblock cellar with a ceiling thick with pipes. A man with a shaggy beard and a grubby t-shirt and jeans was leaning against the wall, and squinted at us as we passed.

"Hey, you." He barked, and we came to a halt. "You not allowed in here. Staff only."

Melanie shot him a dazzling smile.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. We got lost." She explained, replacing her harsh whisper with a cheery sing song voice.

The gentleman raised a grey eyebrow.

"Hell you got lost. That door don't even open. Been shut for years."

"Well, that just goes to show how lost we were then." I said with a tight smile.

The man said nothing, and watched us pass. Imaginably he was not too bewildered to eye us up. This was the least of my problems.

Once we were out of range, Melanie switched back to her whisper.

"So you knew all along that that creature did those things? How can you-"

"I don't know. I guess I just didn't want to believe it."

"But why? Why are you staying with him? He's dangerous."

It was too much. I felt myself bristle.

"Well, you haven't exactly been there for me recently." I reminded her. "I've been texting you and you've barely replied. I know you've been busy, but catching a drink or something couldn't have been too much, could it?"

"Eliza, that's not fair. It's not the point."

A service elevator stood at the end of the cellar, and the frequency of people was increasing. They were mostly shuffling, dishevelled looking people, and probably hired to sort mail. We climbed into the car, sharing it with a massive man covered in tattoos and a lithe figure who was rolling a cigarette.

"I'm sorry." Melanie sighed. Obviously it did not bother her to have personal conversations while surrounded by strangers. "It was uncivil of me, I know. I didn't know that things were this bad. It's like you've gone…"

"Crazy?" I finished.

Melanie scowled.

"I didn't mean that. You've _changed_. That's all. It's like you're obsessed."

The two guys sharing the car glanced at each other. I ignored them.

"I've been through a lot today." I said slowly. My head was beginning to ache. The elevator was too cramped. I felt unclean. "I think we all have. Maybe I am obsessed. I don't know. It is my job, after all. I guess we've just grown apart. And it happens."

Melanie nodded.

The doors slid open with a _ping_, and before us the dankness of the cellar had been replaced with polished marble.

The two men pushed out from us, and walked to the left, while we walked straight ahead. I gazed at the golden light illuminating the ceiling, the geometric patterns that adorned the walls. Art deco.

A woman in a tailored suit clopped past us, talking animatedly on a cell phone, and the murmur of crowds, of people, suddenly filled the air.

"It does. I know. But if you'd taken my advice, I think things would have been a lot better." Melanie told me, looking curiously ahead. We were both thinking the same thing. The Dalek had not been lying about our location.

We rounded the sharp cut corner, and found ourselves standing in a teeming lobby. The iconic mural of the shining skyscraper stood proudly above the information desk, the stars and stripes adorning the walls.

We looked at each other, and by now the situation had become too surreal to make any further comment on our surroundings. The way out was easy enough to spot, as daylight flooded in through the entrance.

"Well why we couldn't have come in this way is a mystery to me." Melanie remarked dryly, in a way that was almost humorous.

I was too tired to laugh. A thousand thoughts whirled around my head.

The Bad Wolf. The lab. Crimes against humanity. Broken friendships. Betrayal. I needed to be alone.

"Look, I need to go." I told her. "I guess you need to too. I'll… see you around?"

Melanie paused awkwardly, ordinary people passing behind her, around us. She seemed genuinely sorry. But the thought that she had been deliberately avoiding me was too unpleasant at that moment.

"Yeah. Okay. Maybe."

"Enjoy the rest of your lunch break."

Without any further goodbyes, I walked away from her, pushing out through the exit, standing under the canopy, out in the open street, the sun blazing.

I hailed a cab, and asked for the address for my apartment.

I had had enough of Sec, enough of Melanie, enough of all of them.

As I lay back in the seat, I tried not to think of what I had done. It was impossible. Had I wilfully ignored what the Dalek was? Was Melanie right? And were we really in danger or had Sec just gone out of his mind, the maddened result of a failed transgenic experiment? Had I been a fool to listen?

I tried to think of the future.

Tonight, I babysat my niece. That would be hell on a different level. But at least it was normal. It was getting away.

I stared out of the window, watching the city pass. Remembered Melanie standing next to me underground, in the chilly cavern.

It was strange.

Although we had been almost touching, she had given off no heat at all.


	8. Chapter Seven: The Evening

Chapter Seven: The Evening

ELIZA: Nine hours later, I found myself sitting on the couch in my brother's living room, being forced to watch _High School Musical_ late into the night.

It could have been worse.

My niece had wanted to have a _Saw_ marathon. She had claimed that this was what she would have been watching if she had been allowed to have a sleepover at her friends instead of having to stay with me. Somehow I doubted it.

The evening had started well. I had watched as my sister-in-law and brother whirled around the house in a panicked frenzy, before leaping into the taxi taking them to JFK. From then on, it went downhill.

Within the space of an hour, I had managed to:

One; insult Norma-Jean's favourite boy band.

Two; order the wrong pizza toppings.

Three; somehow convince Norma Jean that I was a lesbian (which was in no way an insult; I had gone through a phase in my late teens).

Four; weather a tantrum about bed time from said niece.

And five; earn the title of Worst Aunt Ever 2009.

It was a formidable list, coming from a precocious nine-year old. Even so, I was able to let it wash over me.

At least looking after my niece was normal. Looking after my niece largely involved not thinking about Sec, not thinking about where I had been that morning, and not thinking about transgenic experiments being performed on human subjects.

"So, do you think _she's _hot?" Norma Jean was asking. I had been staring at the screen, not really paying attention, and realised that my niece was pointing at the shrieking blonde teen frolicking in a pool a shade too blue.

"Nah, not my type." I answered, as a form of appeasement.

"What _is_ your type then?"

I considered.

"Beyoncé."

"Seriously? That's way out of your league. Aim lower."

We were both leaning back into the cushions, an empty pizza box between us, and Norma Jean pouting at the screen. This evening, it was almost unbearably hot. My niece was savvy beyond her years, and it frightened me to think of the future if kids like her were to inherit the Earth. Any stranger would have described her as a charming young lady, recalling her bright brown eyes, her bushy hair pushed back by a cute pink hair ribbon, and her natural energy, love of sports and vivaciousness. I would have too, if I had not known her. It was unfortunate that I did.

When I thought about Norma Jean, I tended to recall the back chat, the unashamed insensitivity, her unrelenting sense of entitlement, and worst of all, the apple juice incident from a picnic two summers ago.

We'd met in Central Park for the day, me, Mom, Malcolm and family, and is wife's sisters. Half way through lunch, Norma Jean had thought it would be funny to place a juice box under the cushion I'd brought to sit on. You can imagine what happened next. I became the laughing stock of the picnic. I would have found it funny too. But then Norma Jean kept going on about it for the next five hours, and later sprayed a well-aimed jet of water from a toy gun at my pants.

At some point, we began a game of soccer. A ball I threw went awry and had collided with my niece's head, knocking her out. She was only out for a few seconds, but she cried a lot. I had a hard time convincing Odette, her mother, that it had been an accident.

It quite clearly explained why she wasn't so keen on me babysitting her this weekend.

I had totally got over it though.

Really.

Well, she was only a kid. It was stupid to bear a grudge against someone so many years your junior. Swallowing my prejudice, I decided to use the weekend ahead to zone out from my current anxieties, and _try_ to get on with my youngest relative. I was coping well.

"Auntie, can I ask you a question?"

I nodded.

"Go ahead."

"Why _did_ you get shot last year?"

My chest clenched. I looked at her in surprise. Of course, after Sec and I narrowly escaped the horrors of Skaro and that bullet was planted in my chest, all of my family was informed. Once I had been moved out into a regular hospital ward, Norma Jean had come to visit with her parents. It was pretty obvious that I was in a bad way. Even so I didn't think that she would have been told the actual details of my hospitalisation. It was not exactly the kind of thing you would tell a child.

"It was a protester. Someone brought a gun into the university where I was working that day, and I was just unlucky."

Norma raised an eyebrow.

"Did it hurt a lot?"

"No, it sort of tickled."

"Really? I would've thought that it would have really hurt."

"It did. Of course it did. But I'm a lot better now."

We were silent for a long time. I tried to watch as Zack Efron fell into swimming pools and played golf, but I came to notice that Norma Jean no longer seemed interested. She was watching me.

"There must have been a lot of blood and stuff." She remarked.

"When?"

"When you were shot."

"Really Norma? This isn't really a nice subject, is it? Why don't you watch the film?"

My niece folded her arms with a superior air.

"I don't see why we can't talk about it. I like talking about that kind of stuff. I think it's cool. My best friend Lauren, me and her write stories about zombies and guts all the time. We're not at all wussy. You might like them."

"Oh? And you also like High School Musical?" I added dryly, as a musical basket-ball game began on screen.

"Yeah. But just because… Zack is cute." I watched as she paused, a look of embarrassment crossing her face. I became curious.

"Just how much did your Dad say about my accident anyway?"

"Oh. I asked, and he told me. Mom and Dad tell me everything. He said it's because Granny and Grandpa didn't tell him a lot when you and him were little. He gives me anything I want. He says I'm his special little girl, and I deserve to know things."

"Uh-huh…"

"I want to write stories about death when I grow up…" Norma added thoughtfully. "Everyone thinks I'm wussy because I'm a girl, so I'm going to prove them wrong. You nearly _died_ Auntie. That must have been so cool."

There was a chilling smugness in the way my niece spoke. She was staring at me with her pretty, but challenging eyes. It was as if she expected to get her own way. It was enfuriating.

"Why are you thinking about that? You're only _nine_!"

"So?"

"I think…" I held back my words. My chest was hurting again, and I could feel a lump rising in my throat. I let out a breath. Temper. "Never mind."

I glanced at the clock, glad to see that it was a little past my niece's allotted bed time. I gave her a bop on the knee.

"Right Trouble, off to bed."

Norma Jean scowled.

"What? But we haven't finished! At the end of this scene?"

"This scene has only just started."

"But it's a really _funny_ bit! You'll really _like_ it! It's actually hilarious! Please let me watch it, please?"

Beyond caring, I let my niece watch the next scene, and did not send her to bed until the end of the film, by which point she had fallen asleep anyway. I coaxed her awake enough so that she could climb the stairs, brush her teeth, and climb under her very pink sheet, and then made my way back downstairs to sit in front of the TV. I was deathly tired, but wide awake at the same time. Too much had happened for me to sleep easily. Besides, I feared that my usual night terrors might have followed me over the Brooklyn Bridge and would be waiting for me once my eyes had closed.

I took my files down with me and laid them on my lap. But it was no good.

Why, why in the _world_ had a nine-year old asked me about being shot and nearly dying? She shouldn't even have known, and now the pain in my chest was filling my mind, the ragged thoughts that had come with the day followed it. They rushed through my head like clouds caught on the summit of a ravaged peak, only to be torn apart and become distorted, menacing.

Everything had become such a mess.

Why _did_ I trust Sec? I had known all along that he was a killer, and I had kidded myself that it was in self-defence, or through a war. But now I knew for certain that he had done worse. He had tortured hundreds of people, he and his cult. He had twisted bodies into unnatural forms. He and his comrades had violated both flesh and minds. I had known. I must have. Part of me had.

So, what had I done? I had _sympathised _with him. I had rationalised what he had done, glossed over the ugly doubts in my head.

Worst of all, I _liked_ the Hybrid. He was my friend, and now that I was disgraced in the eyes of Melanie, potentially the only friend I could speak to. What did that say about me?

My note taking had diminished to little more than me tapping the empty page with my biro. I was so tired. The weather was still so hot. I could hear the sound of a siren, somewhere close, whistling into the stifling night. The curtains filled with air, flowing spectre like into the room. The clock ticked on the mantel piece. My page was still empty. My pen became slippery in my hand…

At some point I must have fallen asleep, because all at once, I had jolted awake. I had slipped onto my side, and found myself lying on my arm, which had become stiff. I blinked, and noticed that I felt tremendously alert. What had woken me up? Another nightmare? No; I would have remembered it. I would have still been scared.

I sat up.

The lights were off in the kitchen. Norma Jean had not come down stairs for anything. So what had changed?

The glasses on the table were ringing.

I leaned forward, puzzled. Earlier they had been filled with coke, and they had long since emptied. Now, placed as I had left them, touching rims, they were trembling against one another, creating a high pitched, eerie note.

Only seconds after I had registered the sound, I noticed something else. I looked up. The light fitting was swaying, casing rolling shadows across the room.

_This is the east coast_, I told myself. _We can't get earthquakes here_.

But even as the thoughts left my mind I became aware of a quiet, but deep rumbling that seemed to come from below. It resonated through the air, through the walls, and for miles around. Something was very, very wrong.

A vase rolled off the mantelpiece and crashed to the floor, and that was what spurred me to my senses. I ran out of the room, and hurtled up the stairs, which even as I climbed them, began to sway underneath me. From the street outside, there began the howling of a car alarm, which was joined by another, then another, until a cacophony that could be heard from hell joined the crashing rumble that filled the air. I stumbled into my niece's bedroom.

"Norma, Norma baby. We've got to get out."

But Norma Jean was already awake, and she gazed confusedly around the room. The oval mirror on her vanity tilted, knocking her toys and childish cosmetic brands onto the carpet. Soft toys tumbled from her shelves, and bounced as they hit the floor, followed by the smashing of a china ballerina.

"What's going on?" She begged, but I had already wrenched her out of bed, and now we were running down the stairs as the pictures tumbled from the wall and smashed one by one. Bits of plaster were raining from the ceiling. I threw open the front door, and Norma Jean shrieked as I tripped on the steps, and we both fell clumsily out into the night.

All around us, I could hear bewildered screams, the breaking of glass, and underneath it all the terrible snarl of the earth.

Vaguely, I remembered seeing a documentary on how to survive in an earthquake, and so I pulled us both into the middle of the sidewalk, and dropped to the ground, covering my head, hugging Norma to me as I did so. The houses up and down my brother's street were beginning to empty. I could hear a baby crying.

"We're all going to die, aren't we?!" My niece moaned through the collar of her pyjama top. Every atom of my being agreed with her, screamed for mercy, but I told her:

"No, we're not going to die. Just lie down, stay like this. Hold on; everything will be fine."

In all of the confusion, nobody was looking up. How could they, when the earth was the apparent enemy? And yet, for a moment, I became aware of a flash, a sudden brightness that lit up the shuddering buildings around us with the light of a final sunset, and then everything became dark once more. It was too sudden, too inexplicable to register. And slowly, slowly, the trembling began to cease. The stony tiles that swayed inches away from my nose began to fall still, like the deck of a ship entering calmer water. The whole thing couldn't have lasted much more than fifteen seconds.

The car sirens still howled. The tremor had stopped, but now it had been replaced with a terror which filled the air. It was electric; a fear that I could almost taste seemed to lie over the whole city, and, as I was later to learn, the entire globe.

Barely daring to believe it was over, I unfurled myself, Norma Jean still curled on the ground, and looked around. I could smell burning. Next to my head, the break light of a car blinked on and off, and across the street the winking lights stretched like danger signals. Nearly every house was awake. The nightmare in the wake of the freak disaster could only have just begun.

"Norma," I nudged at the little figure who trembled next to me, feeling a natural sense of relief to see that she was okay. "Norma, it's alright. It's stopped. You're not hurt. It's over."

It was far from over and I knew it, but even so, Norma jean gingerly sat up, glancing around.

"I'm scared." She whined. Then she added: "Not that scared. But what happened."

"It's okay; I'm scared too." I admitted. "But I think we'll be alright. We'd better stay outside though. There may be an aftershock."

I looked over at her.

Norma Jean was staring at the sky. I doubted that she'd heard a word I'd just said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Auntie…" Norma Jean whispered, her eyes wide.

It was only then that I became aware of a fresh sense of fear, and I followed her gaze and looked up.

"Fucking hell…" I murmured.

Half an hour later, we crept back into the shelter of the house. The threat of aftershocks was still a possibility, but it had largely been diminished by the transformation in which the night sky had taken. Besides the previously sweltering night had become bitterly cold.

Norma Jean crept into the sitting room and curled up on the sofa. The two glasses lay in pieces which glittered on the carpet. My brother's books were strewn across the floor as if the room had been ransacked, but apart from that and the dust which coated every surface, there had been very little damage caused by the quake.

I had pulled out my phone and began pacing around the room.

The first person I called was my father. I had to tell him that we were alright. The quake would have been on the news.

My call was answered almost immediately.

"_Eliza? It's all right, we're both fine-"_

"Dad," I broke in with a voice that trembled, "there was an earthquake. Here, in New York. I'm with Norma Jean in Brooklyn. It was just a small one, so everything is okay-"

"_Eliza, listen. It happened here too in Chicago. You haven't seen the news, have you?_"

I stopped pacing. Norma Jean was crying silently behind me, with her knees drawn up to her chest. All of her cunning and grim satisfaction had gone.

"_It wasn't just us. It wasn't just the U.S that was hit. Everybody in the world felt that quake._"

Shakily, I lowered myself onto the couch.

"How is that possible?" I asked.

"_You must have seen the sky outside. You tell me_."

"How can I? I don't understand. We can see other planets in the sky. Dad, is this the apocalypse?"

Norma Jean threw me a look of fresh horror. I had forgotten that she could hear every word that I said. I knew that I had to be strong, for her sake, but it was extremely difficult.

"_I don't know. _I _don't think so; I've never believed in such things. But there are many people who do. Eliza, in a time like this, if anything else it will be the people around you who become the most dangerous. You're at Malcolm's? And how's Norma Jean; is she safe?_"

"She is. We both are."

"_Wonderful. Keep things that way. Your brother and your sister-in-law will still be airborne so they should be fine. Tell her that."_

"I will." My mind was racing. A world-wide quake.

"Listen, Dad," I began, "there's someone I know who might know what's happening. I need to talk to him."

"_I'm not sure anybody knows what's happening, but whatever you do, make sure everybody knows that you're safe._"

"Yes Dad. But he-"

I was interrupted by the sound of the back door imploding. Norma Jean jumped, letting out a small shriek and grabbing my arm hard enough to make me yelp. A burning smell was floating in from the kitchen.

"_What was that?"_ My Dad asked through the phone.

I peered around the door.

"No worries. That's probably him now. Talk to Norma-Jean. She's pretty upset."

"_Eliza, what-"_

I tossed the phone in my bewildered niece's direction, ran into the kitchen, just in time to see Sec running over the smouldering remains of the back door. He looked lost in the domestic setting. There was no question about how he knew where my brother's home was. He had every GPS setting stored in that domed mind of his. I was not even a bit surprised.

"Alright then." I shouted. "Do you want to tell me what the _hell _is going on?"

The Dalek struggled over the glass and wood, and rolled onto the tiles.

"ELIZA, WE ARE IN GRAVE DANGER-"

"Yes, yes, alright, I might have guessed that part. What _sort_ of danger? What has happened? Was this the terrible disaster you predicted?"

Sec paused, as if out of breath.

"YES."

Before he could go on, Norma Jean appeared around the door. She had never seen Sec before, the fact that he was a robot, threateningly tank-like, and the fact that the sky outside had an apocalyptic hue did a lot to unsettle her. She screamed.

"_What is it?" _She demanded, as her eyes bulged like dinner plates and pointing. She was still holding the phone I noticed, meaning that her Grandfather had probably been deafened. Sec recoiled, apparently equally as frightened as her.

"It's alright," I tried to soothe, "he's a friend! He won't hurt you."

"THIS IS THE SPAWN OF YOUR BROTHER?" Sec remarked. Norma Jean burst into tears. Smooth.

"It's an alien! It's in my house!" She moaned, my Dad hearing every word. "Auntie's gone mad and is talking to it!"

"Both of you, please! SHUT UP!" I bellowed.

Both Dalek and spawn fell quiet. Norma Jean bit her lip. Her wide eyes were streaming. I could easily forgive her for thinking I'd lost it. Taking in a deep breath, I turned back to Sec.

"For the last time, what's going on?"

Sec made no sound. His blue eye-stalk revolved, looking between me and Norma-Jean. I waited for an answer.

I was frustrated when, instead, the Dalek advanced towards us.

"FORGIVE ME." He said "THERE IS NO TIME TO EXPLAIN."

And with that, a blue glow began to spread across his casing. Strands of light spilled across the machine, apparently generated from within, as quick and as strange as lightning.

"What are you doing?" I began to ask, but then a stinging sensation spread up my arms, across my chest, down my legs and across my scalp, and I began to understand.

Behind me, Norma Jean let out a gasp of fear.

"Don't you dare!" I tried to shout, but it was already too late. My brother's kitchen was vanishing, as it was torn apart in microseconds by the outlandish angular lights.

Only, it was me being torn apart, atom by atom. I had done this before. We were teleporting.

Suddenly I was sand, dust. My heart screamed, a million beats per second, giving out, unable to survive the impossible state of being. I could not be alive. Everything was a thunder cloud of blue. I was going to die.

Then, the next thing I knew, something slammed into my stomach, knocking me breathless, and I tumbled, with a thud, against a wall.

Or was it a wall?

No, it was carpet. The air smelled of burning, electricity, and, more notably, of men's deodorant.

I looked up to see that Norma Jean had landed on top of me. She gazed woozily around. She was still in her dressing gown. So she had come too. She had to endure the agony and the confusion, at a time where nothing made sense anymore. No matter how big a pain she could be, that was in just.

"I think we're dead." She informed me with a dull certainty.

Raged rushed through me.

"You _can't_ do that!" I cried. Wherever we were, Sec, our mode of transport, could not have been that far away. "You can't just beam us away like that! Where have you taken us?"

I had known that Sec could teleport. Forget that; he could even travel through time. It was the reason why his glorious hybrid self had ended up reverted to spending half it's time locked inside a travel machine once more. But I also knew that this took a lot of power. Power which took a long time to reclaim. Whatever the reason for moving us was, it must have been important.

I spotted him across the room, from a worm's-eye perspective. The Dalek was searching the space, like an obscure animate lighthouse, shouting piercingly.

"LEWIS? LEWIS, WHERE ARE YOU?"

Lewis?

"Sit up a sec." I told Norma-Jean, and struggled to my feet. My head felt as though it was full of mercury. Lights burned through my vision, a migraine.

I saw very little of the flat. I took in the hundreds books in upset piles about the floor. The album covers, some disturbed by the quake, carefully displayed about the walls. The enormous sound system. Several guitars. The upright piano and the pages of paper that had been thrown from it.

And through an open window, out on the fire escape, stood a red-headed figure. The figure was already turning, and spotting me first the look of confusion on his face became more intense. He was wearing glasses. I had never seen him wearing glasses before. For a moment, despite the madness of our predicament, I thought about how well they suited him.

"Sec?! _Eliza_?!" Lewis Coleman demanded. "_How_ are you in my apartment?!"

I ran to the window as he climbed nimbly back through. I grabbed his long-fingered hand, feeling how cold it was.

"It's hard to explain. I think he teleported us. But listen, something crazy big is about to happen and – no, not again! Don't you dare!"

I stared at my hand, and Lewis's, as the blue light burned across them both. It was as if they were one. The stinging began once again to spread rapidly through my body.

"HOLD ON!" Sec's mechanical roar instructed us from somewhere, although we had little choice.

I felt like ash caught by a hurricane, as if I was being swept miles and miles, faster than possible across a rushing, blinding blue torrent of lightning. It was how thunder must feel before it strikes the ground, how protons feel as they are pulsed through a wire. When I had been transported to another planet, the Rift had burned, like the sun, like plasma. But this was a waterfall. We were moving.

Then, darkness.

Softness, as my body struck the ground, a ground with crunched, rustled, and flew about on impact.

The smell. Mulch, earth, grainy yet sweet, and the sting of cold air as it hit my nostrils. It took me a moment to realise that my eyes were already open, and I spotted the torch-like eye of our transporter glowing out of the night like a blue firefly.

Around me, the darkness stirred. I heard Lewis's voice cursing next to me, felt the warmth of his body. Apart from that, silence. No rush of traffic. No blaring of car horns. Only the occasional rustle of a bird's wings, and a waiting, living quietness.

Wherever we were, we were certainly no longer in the City.

I stood up, plunging my hands into the papery mass which had cushioned me. They were leaves. I was too dazed to speak, and instead, let my eyes adjust to the darkness.

We could only have been in a forest. Every sound was cushioned by trees and decades of litter. But everything was bathed in a slight, eerie light, a greenish glow. I gazed upwards to see a canopy stretched high above me. Leaves crisscrossed and stretched above, like fingers, framing the sky, which glowed brighter than it had in the city. It looked at once more terrible, and more beautiful than anything I could possibly have imagined.

I tore my gaze away from the cursed sky, blew a leaf out of my face, and ran over to help as the sprawled form of my niece tried to raise herself from the ground.

"Is everyone okay? All in one piece?" I asked.

Lewis stood up, reaching his full six feet of height, spitting out a mouthful of crumbled litter. We were illuminated by Sec, who was watching us, making no offer of consolidation or for help. It was as if he feared us, what we might say.

But he had done too much for me to take a long time ago.

I hid my fear with my fury.

"A forest." I spat. "A _fucking_ forest! The world's about to end and we could be fucking anywhere! Who knows; the cold or wolves might kill us before the fire rains from the sky!"

I marched towards him, watching as his light flicked, as if considering escape, which I half expected he would.

"That reminds me," I went on, livid. "You never _did_ tell me what was going to happen did you? The end of the world? Is that what that fucking writing was telling you? Well, we deserve an explanation. Fast."

"The world's _ending_?"

There was the crashing of feet behind me as Lewis and my shivering niece came up behind me. In the shadows, I saw that Lewis was dressed in a shirt and a pair of braces, like an old jazz player. Perhaps he would have been performing tonight, before all sense and sanity had shattered.

"Sec, is that why you've brought us here?" He asked, quietly. I could hear the fear in his words. "To be safe?"

"This won't be safe!" Norma Jean chimed, now more grumpily than afraid. She had had too much of it tonight too. "Not if the whole _world_ is going to end! We're in a forest! That's where the zombies will appear first."

She paused, looking up at me.

"We _are _still on the world, right? Like, planet Earth? Has he taken us to his planet?"

"Earth is his planet." Said Lewis grimly. "One of them, anyway. Part of him is from Earth. His other planet's not a particularly nice place, I've heard."

"Don't tell me, I've been there." I added. "You'd love it Norma. Lots of killing, plenty of horror."

I could feel my niece's scowl.

"LISTEN." Sec barked. His voice was dampened by the woods. "I APOLOGISE TO ALL OF YOU. YOU WISH FOR AN EXPLAINATION, AND I SHALL GIVE IT TO YOU. PLEASE…"

We waited. I folded my arms over my chest, mostly to shut out the cold.

Sec drew back, addressing us all.

"LOOK AT THE SKY," Sec commanded, and we looked, not that we needed to ask why.

"WE ARE STILL ON EARTH. BUT EARTH IS NO LONGER IN ITS SOLAR SYSTEM."

It was impossible, but none of us tried to deny it. What we saw when we looked up was evidence enough for my Dalek's words.

"Then where are we?" I asked. I was not sure that I wanted to know

"WE ARE IN A PLACE THAT TIME CANNOT REACH." Sec said.

Somewhere in the forest ahead, the ground was glowing. I realised that it was water, reflecting the sky. A lake.

"ELIZA. LEWIS."

There came a warm rush of air, a hiss, and the clanking of metal. He was opening his casing. I stood back, and Lewis did too, pulling in a sharp inhale of air. Norma Jean grabbed my arm, eyes wide.

"Motherfucker." I think I heard her whisper.

Sec stepped out of his casing, shakily, fully in his hybrid form. He used the sides of his shell to pull himself upright, and stumbled out into the leaves. He must have morphed inside his casing, and appeared to have clothed himself in a flowing makeshift garment, like a rough black toga. He must have been stowing it in there for a while.

He gazed at us sadly, and I saw the terror in his writhing face.

"You are both," he began, his voice quiet, "the two beings I care about most in existence. I've brought you both here to be safe, but the Spawn is right. Nowhere is safe anymore."

"Sec…" Lewis murmured, and I realised that this could only have been the first time that he had seen him in his true form.

"Nowhere is safe…" I echoed. "The world really is ending, isn't it?"

Sec nodded, and gazed towards the lake.

"Not now. But it will, very soon. And it is my fault. Every part of it was engineered by me, intentionally and unintentionally. I am so sorry."

The shivering I felt was no longer from the cold. Mournfully, Sec and I looked back at the sky.

What was going to happen? I had already guessed. I shook my head.

"But they're gone. We saw the last of them die. We killed them."

"One survived." Sec said, his voice as expressionless as stone. "The only one terrible enough to replace me."

We stared at the sky.


	9. Chapter Eight: Planets

Chapter Eight: Planets

SEC:

It took the shaking of the earth above me to realise what had happened. I had been watching the heavens, searching for danger, when conveniently the danger dragged us into its trap, like a long tentacle, not thin and worm-like, but the kind with suckers barbed with little teeth. Except, it was even simpler. This was no trap. This was a creature that hid in the canopy of night, then swooped down, snatched its prey, and dragged it back to its lair to be eaten.

I should have known.

It had been our idea.

I had struggled out of the wires, snapped back to a newly swaying, dripping, pitch-black reality. Blind Sec. Stupid Sec. The past years had been fat years of inactivity. Lazy, wasted years. Retirement. I should have kept a vigil. What I had attempted that morning should have been started on that treacherous winter eighty years ago.

But what could Dalek Sec do? Dalek Sec the outcast? The traitor? Nothing.

The laboratory was dark. The lights had been cut. Confused, sluggish, I opened my eye, and the man-made stalagmites that held up the world above blinked eerily into life.

The writing was everywhere.

ELIZA:

The four of us stand on the edge of the lake now. I have poured through every detail of the past few days in my mind, putting them into words like a poem. Or as a eulogy. Regardless, nobody will hear it.

But there is the present. And the present is alive. For now, at least, the hair prickles on my arm, I can feel my heart somewhere in my throat, in my head. For now, I am alive.

I have three companions. I always imagined that if I was to die, it would be in the arms of somebody I loved. My Dad perhaps, hugging me, telling me that everything was going to be okay. But I heard him just a moment ago; not next to me, but hundreds of miles away, now potentially further. Or with a glorious lover, someone to whom I would have given my heart. We would cling to one another, not letting go until we were no more, perhaps sharing one final, dramatic kiss. It would be a death out of a movie.

Instead; Lewis. A man I barely know. Red haired, skinny, dressed in a suit with a pink waistcoat. His tortoise-shell frames reflect the sky in their glass.

Then my young niece with an unnecessary double name, looking chilly in her pink pyjamas. A relation by blood, but so different in age, in personality, that she may as well be a stranger.

And of course, Sec. Right now, he is a sinewy mollusc of a creature, the most obscure of all my associates. And he appears to be wearing a curtain to preserve whatever modesty he could possibly have. He must have stowed it in his casing, in an emergency, all he would need to do is haul it around himself like a robe. Now is an emergency.

And we are all looking at the sky.

It is hard not to look at, especially as its reflected twin peers out from the lake below. It stretches above us, as it always did, but was difficult to appreciate before as it was not previously filled with planets.

Our atmosphere appears to have been parted, one side alight, the other side a swirling marble of impossible shapes. Take a step back. This is no sky, but an aerial view of a gas giant. Other planets hang behind it, some small, one is ringed. They fill every corner of the vision, dipping below the shadowy tree-lined horizon. But beyond that; a tapestry of fierce infinite design, that no thread and needle could ever hope to capture. There are no stars. There are veins and swirls of gas, however, each stretching across unimaginable distances. There are yellows, dark greens; colours which I did not think painted outer space. I have never been into space. No human could ever have dreamed of going far enough to lose the stars, until now that is.

Of course I have already seen this. I saw it as soon as the earthquake finished outside of my brother's house. But the lights of the city diminished it; it was little more than a smudge.

Is this why Sec has taken us out here?

To enjoy the view? He may as well have. It is spectacular. Impossible. My brain refuses to compute what my eyes see, so I try harder, and when I do understand it, I rapidly fall back into disbelief, lest I lose my sanity.

It is frightening.

At last, the hybrid; the cyclops and medusa at once, tears his gaze away and shakes his head.

"We need to get inside."

"But we're in the middle of nowhere." I reply. Not that I know this. We are in a wood. We may be a kilometre away from human habitation, or a thousand miles. Besides that, this wood could be almost anywhere on earth.

We could be in China for all I know. Or Norway, perhaps. I would like to be in Norway. But Norway, if what Sec says is true, is no longer where it used to be, nor is America.

"Where did you take us?"

"We are in the Catskill mountains." Sec tells us. "I took us out here to be safe. I need to think."

He begins to walk, his bare feet shift through the litter.

I can feel Lewis' eyes staring, torn between the heavens and our guide. He has never seen Sec as the hybrid, as what he really is. Poor boy. It was terrible timing, really.

Norma Jean shuffles next to me. She wears no shoes either. Instinctively, I lift her into a piggy-back, which is a mistake as she is heavier than she was when she was six.

We follow.

As we walk, Sec's casing glides along-side us. It is caught by the eerie phosphoresce of the sky. None of us speak, and we have the small blessing that our guide seems to know where we are. The sudden chill, the smell of warm vegetation and of the water is our language. We listen to our environment. The familiar has become an alien landscape, quite literally.

"Are there wolves out here?" The whisper brushes my ear. Norma Jean has leaned forward on my back, I can feel the warmth of her breath.

"I don't think so." I reply, but I am not sure. We should be safe around the Dalek.

We used to go up to the Catskills when I was a girl for long weekends and holidays. My parents were fond of walking, increasingly less with each other, while Malcolm and I preferred to stay around lakesides and make up games. I haven't been in the mountains for years, and this was certainly not the way in which I expected to return. The fear alone transforms the place. This is not my forest; not anymore. This is not our world.

Presently, there is a sound and Sec comes to a stop. His tentacles twitch, as if he is listening, unsure. I freeze. My niece grips my shoulders and I almost drop her.

There is the sound of feet; four feet, scampering towards us from the dark. A bark echoes, coming closer, and then out of the shadows something, a very large, lupine something leaps at the hybrid. It lands its paws squarely in the middle of his chest, knocking him to the ground. Sec yelps. I expect a flash of blue, a shot from his casing. Nothing comes.

The beast snarls. Norma Jean shrieks. I let her slide from my back.

"Wolf!"

Lewis and I run to help. His attacker is not a wolf, but a dog. It is almost the size of a large pony and snaps viciously at his writhing head. Animals do not like him. It reminds me of the slyther. I can smell it, feel the grease on its hair as I try to haul it off, and with our help the hybrid rolls out from underneath it.

But then, a clicking.

"Who goes there?"

I turn and find myself staring at the double barrel of a rifle. It glints in the starlight. My heart almost bursts with fear.

I leap in front of Norma Jean to protect her.

"What the hell are you doing?!" I shout at the invisible gunman.

The stranger doesn't move. I can see very little of him, only the bulk of a thick jacket, and white wispy hair under a hunting cap.

It is Sec who speaks, edging away from the jaws of the beast.

"_Frank!_ Frank, it's Dalek Sec! I have brought friends! Lower your weapon!"

The weapon remains. The stranger waits in a distrustful silence.

"Heel, Bonnie." He calls.

The dog, still growling thunderously backs away from the hybrid, and licking its chops, saunters to its master's side. It is afraid, I don't have to be able to see it to know that. Animals can sense disaster. I had read that somewhere. They know when there is going to be a hurricane, or an earthquake apparently. I suppose this brute has been having one hell of an evening.

Frank, as the stranger is apparently called, does not move, and nor does his gun.

"You're back then." At long last he growls. "I didn't think I'd see anymore of you, devil."

There is a shifting as Sec tries to sit up. Lewis, after hesitating, helps him to his feet.

At last, the rifle is lowered from my eyes.

I see a short man, wearing a pale shirt under his jacket. His face is lost in a portrait of whiskers and shadow. The dog, a hound of some sort whines. Frank looks at the four of us in turn, and then nods slowly.

"You'd best come indoors then." He tells us.

As he turns, I realise how much I've been shaking. The air has become unnaturally raw, yet I can feel myself sweating.

A calloused hand reaches out, takes mine.

"I didn't mean to scare you ma'am." He grumbles apologetically. "I'm sure, giving the circumstances that you can forgive me for being armed. And the little lady?"

Norma Jean's eyes are as wide and as white as my mother's prized dishes.

"I think I'm going crazy." She says. "I really, _really_ want to go home."

I am led blindly forward by the stranger, and in less than a minute I make out a rectangle of light. Before I know it, I'm stepping onto a wooden veranda, then into a warm, well-lit space which smells of wood smoke. The enormous dog pushes past out legs and settles herself down on a worn woollen rug.

Lewis sidles in, looking around, while Norma Jean, apparently soothed by the normalcy of a man-made place, drinks in the features shyly.

Sec however waits by the door. It is as if he is afraid to enter any further.

I let go of the hand.

The house is some sort of cabin. It is well decorated, with wooded cladding and heavy beams across the ceiling. The walls are lined with shelf after shelf of books, books of every size and variety. The rest of the sitting room is adorned with many items, so worn and varied that they can only have been accumulated through a lengthy lifetime. Photos look wistfully out at us from their frames. There are many chairs, the comfortable kind which have been used by many, and without waiting for an invitation I find myself sinking into one.

I feel as though I have died. Perhaps Thayer's bullet did drain my life out of me after all. Finding myself in this comfy, homely abode of a stranger somehow is the surrealist part of the evening. I want an explanation, but I am too tired.

Frank looks at all of us in turn, then lies the sleek, well looked after weapon carefully onto a low table which is draped by a scarlet throw.

Without really knowing when or why, I drop off.

"Yeah, she's my auntie you see. She is supposed to be taking care of me. I don't know who he is…" Norma Jean is saying.

She is sitting on one of the strangers plush seats, munching casually on a cookie. A chequered blanket has been thrown around her shoulders. She seems calm, seems to have recovered more than the rest of us. I guess it's a thing that kids do well; they can bounce.

She is talking about Lewis. Lewis is perched, a little stiffly, on a dining chair behind where Norma Jean sits. He just looks tired.

Frank is listening to her.

One of his arms rests on his mantel piece, his enormous wolf hound close to his feet. He has lit a fire and the warmth of the flames is delicious, but alarming.

He is very old. His wizened face is marked with liver spots, and his sparse hair is the kind of white which only appears in the very last decades of a person's life. He has a moustache, a short bushy one which sits somewhere between walrus like and stiff. Yet his back is straight, and I can imagine by his clothing, his heavy jacket, thick body warmer and heavy boots that he often goes outside, keeps himself moving. His eyes look young. Or they don't look young, they just look alert. They are a dark wakeful brown, clear of cataracts or any other defects. He looks like the kind of man who is ready to ask questions, or find answers. What has made him like that? Experience I can suppose. But what kind?

He is listening as Norma Jean recounts what happened. I think she likes the attention. She likes being able to put the crazy last hour into her own words.

"That guy; the one with the ball sack head." She points at Sec, who has not moved from his position by the door. He flinches at the crude honesty of her description of him. "He's an alien. He took us here, but I think he can change shape or something. He comes out of a robot which looks like a giant salt shaker. It's out on your porch if you don't believe me, sir."

I sit up, unable to believe that I dozed off.

Frank bends down, tosses another log onto the dwindling flames, then straitens up to look steadily at Sec in the corner.

"Don't worry, I believe you young lady." He says patiently. There is a slight drawl to his voice. It is rich, grandfatherly, every word placed carefully. He is a man who has been among others and knows how to talk effectively to them. "I know better than anyone else in the world what that thing is."

He notices me looking, and lowers his hand from its rest.

"You awake ma'am? Perhaps you'd like something to drink?"

"I'm good, thanks."

But Lewis stirs from his seat, as if wanting something to do.

"I'll get you some water." He calls. Frank raises his eyebrows approvingly.

"Glasses are in the left cupboard above the kettle."

Lewis makes towards the doorway on his left, glancing carefully over his shoulder before disappearing. What does he think he's doing? Is he at a loose end? Does he just want to be useful? Either way, I realise that my tongue is parched, and, yes, I do need a glass of water after all.

"Now, Mister Sec." Frank begins, and he looks politely over to where the hybrid stands. "I think you owe us all a proper explanation. It's bad enough you dragging these good folk hundreds of miles out of the city for no good reason and lodging them in my home without my prior knowledge. I assume you know what's happened to the sky?"

"He said the Earth's been stolen." Norma Jean interjects through a mouthful of crumbs. She speaks very casually. "I don't know what he means though. I think he means that we're all about to die."

Sec appears to be trying to take up as little space as possible in the cabin. He looks incredibly out of place in this homely, lived-in territory. He is like Boo Radley, only a version many times more monstrous than the one invented by Scout, Jem and Dill. He is still only wearing what appears to be the old curtain, wrapped around his fluid, worm-like frame like a toga. I wonder, why did he leave his casing tonight anyway, out here in the woods? Did he want to appear more human? It scares me that he feels that this is an appropriate precaution. _I am one of you_, it says._ Not one of them_.

He draws in a deep breath, closes his eye tight. I see the cloth move over his chest, where his breathing holes, like the blow-hole on a whale, sit just below the collar bone.

"The Daleks have moved the Earth into the Medusa Cascade," he begins, "along with twenty-four other planets. They are building a weapon with them, and are about to achieve their final victory. It can only mean that they are the strongest they have been since before the beginning of the Time War. So, yes. I believe that all non-Dalek life may be about to face total annihilation." He trails off. "That is what I believe is happening."

Naturally, we are silent once he finishes speaking. Lewis walks back into the kitchen, a glass of water in his hand. He hands it to me and I take it, hold onto it, and take a sip. He attempts a smile, timid, fleeting, but then looks over at Sec, to whom attention has been diverted.

I think we are taking the news rather well. We have just been told that the world is going to be destroyed.

To be honest, what more could we have expected?

For a long time, Frank stares into the flames, then nods slowly.

"Well." He says meditatively. "That's a terrible shame."

Lewis straightens up. He caught the latter end of Sec's prediction. He seems heated, and it brims over his exhaustion.

"A _shame_? Is that all you have to say? The end of the world?" He turns to Sec. "Come on, there must be something you can do!"

The hybrid shakes his head.

"No. There is nothing I can do." He looks up, giving Lewis a wan smile. "Right now, all the forces and nations of the planet will be looking at the sky fearing an attack, and even their entirety, they are nothing compared to _one_ Dalek legion."

"That's right," Frank agrees. "I've seen these creatures in action. I know what they can do. And I also know how hard it is to kill just one of them, let alone an entire legion."

This catches my attention, and I look up.

"You have?" I ask. "When? Who exactly are you?"

"Ah, my apologies." The old man tucks his thumbs into his belt. "I am Frank Mendelson. I used to work as a professor of Classical Studies at Yale before I retired, and before that, I flew a fighter plane in the war against Hitler. I came to know Sec during the Great Depression."

"Eliza Birchwood." I answer, nodding to the hybrid. "I'm Sec's probation officer…I guess. Sort of. I stop him from killing people."

"Probation officer, eh?" Frank chuckles dryly, glances at Sec in the corner. "So they finally got hold of you in the end then? Who was it, the FBI?"

Before Sec can attempt a reply, Lewis butts in.

"Mister Mendelson, I'm not sure you appreciate the gravity of the situation here."

"Oh, I appreciate it son. But honestly, I'm not sure what we can do about it."

"We're all about to die."

"Well, I don't know about that."

"For God's sakes-"

"I'm not afraid son," Frank says, and I am mystified by his calmness, "and nor should you be. We've all just got to have a little faith."

He's beginning to sound like my mother, and all at once I give in to an unstoppably wave of hopelessness. I rub my face with my palms.

"Thank you for your hospitality Mister Mendelson; but I doubt that praying to God is going to help us right now."

"He is right. But he is not talking about God."

Sec says this as if his words are a stone, a heavy one, which has been waiting too long before tumbling inevitably off the edge of a precipice. He looks worn, bitter.

I see him ball his nail-less hands into fists. They turn white at the sinewy knuckles.

His emotion, especially coming from a creature as strange as himself, demands all of our attention, and even the wolf hound Bonnie raises her shaggy head to look at him.

"Lewis. Eliza. I took you and the spawn all the way out here to keep you safe. Now, if I knew for certain that we were all going to die, do you think I would have seen the point in doing that?"

Lewis and I glance at each other. He does have a point.

"Go on." I invite.

Sec closes his eye.

"I cannot say that I have faith for anything. But I do have hope, and that is important."

He slumps his posture a little, and addresses Frank Mendelson.

"Frank, we are not alone. You must remember. Who fought my Daleks in 1930? Who defeated them?"

Frank's dark eyes twinkle in recognition.

"As if I'd forget. It was the Doctor of course."

The Doctor. Here he is again. He was mentioned by Sec only this morning.

Sec nods in confirmation.

"He has defeated us before, and as sure as they have always tried to kill him, he will defeat the Daleks again."

"You think so? As many of them as you think? But he's only one man."

"No. He is not. Surely you saw that?"

I stand up. I do not know anything about this conversation, and I can only guess at Frank and Sec's shared history. But I feel helpless at being left out of the conversation.

"Who actually is the Doctor?" I ask firmly. "You told me earlier. You said that he was a time traveller, and that he was your enemy."

I see Lewis, who has been as lost as me, glance up at me, as if wondering why I should know any more than he.

"Oh, nobody knows his name, ma'am." Frank speaks instead of the Hybrid. He warms to his theme, his dark eyes sparkling. "At least, he never told it to me. But he was the cleverest man I have ever met. By far the most crazy too. Oh, we'd all have been killed if it weren't for him. New York, no, the whole world, would never have been the same again."

"1930." I muse. "Let me guess; that was when the Cult of Skaro were doing their experiments in the city?"

Frank nods, and his face darkens with a look of sobriety.

"You're his probation officer. I imagine you already knew."

"Not the whole story. Not until this morning."

Realisation has begun to dawn. I turn to Sec.

"The Doctor; he's the reason why it didn't happen, isn't he?" I ask. "You never mentioned him at all! I thought you'd just had a change of mind."

Norma-Jean has long ago finished her cookie, and has been so far listening to the conversation impassively, legs crossed and her head resting on a hand. But now she looks up.

"What experiments?" She asks, her curiosity shrouded in obvious caution. She looks at me for reassurance.

Sec wears a wretched, hunted expression. Lewis has sat up, and he watches the hybrid with equal question in his eyes.

Frank looks grim.

"It would be better if you didn't know, young lady. But the Doctor put a stop to it."

Frank knows what happened. I realise, and a knife-like cold steals into my chest as I think of it. Frank must have been a witness.

"Is the Doctor a…superhero?" Norma-Jean asks, unbelievingly. "He sounds like one; defeating aliens and stuff. It's like in Spiderman and X Men. I didn't think any of it was real."

"He is not a hero." Sec snaps. Norma-Jean jolts as he interrupts, and watches him with a guarded expression. For the first time since entering he steps away from the wall, and begins to pace. The ridiculous cloth that he wears around his shoulders trails across the floor. It makes him look mad, as well as hellish. If the Doctor, whoever he may be is a hero, then Sec is certainly a villain.

"The Doctor is a predator. He slaughtered an entire Dalek army, _my_ army, as I watched, and the Cult and I were barely able to escape! He has done terrible, terrible things."

He halts. We, his audience, wait. Lewis has narrowed his pale eyes. He looks betrayed. I, myself, am unsure what to think. Everything the hybrid has just said confirms his malevolent past, but I already knew that. I did not know about the Doctor.

"But… he has done great things as well. He is a genius. He has the freedom to do so, and he has the choice to do well. I never did. Not until I did this to myself."

I see Frank swallow. Norma-Jean, seated on her chair seems understandably lost.

The enormous dog lies her head on her paws, whines.

Her crying seems to make Sec aware of himself. He pulls his make-shift garment closer to his body. Nods.

"I know that he will save Earth. He would only be happy to die at last trying to. He will have to find us first, but I cannot doubt him. All we can do is stay here. I don't trust the chaos of the city. Here is safe. We can only wait and hope."

The dog sniffs the air and shuffles closer to the fire. The eerie light from the sky outside plays on the window, like a full moon.

Then, from his corner, Lewis lets out a long, shaky breath. Before anyone can say anything he rises to his feet, and heads towards the screen door. Sec watches him approach, opens his mouth as if to say something. As if to comfort. But Lewis pushes past him, throws open the door, and closes it heavily. It does not slam, but it has a similar effect.

"Is he okay?" Frank asks Sec.

"Of course not." I answer for him. "It's been a long night for all of us. Sec? What you said was true? You really think that this person, this Doctor, is going to come?"

Sec watches the screen door sadly. His explanation's effect on the musician seems to have upset him.

Unable to help myself, as the trust of our friendship makes itself present, I walk over to him.

He looks up at me, his old blue eye filled with a bitter knowing.

"He will."

I put an arm round him. He shivers a little, his lithe figure small under his toga-like robe.

"Good. Now either go back into your casing, or put something else on. You look freezing as well as stupid. Don't worry about Lewis."

"The young man has a lot to think about. We all do." Frank agrees, and I wonder at the warmth in his voice.

I lead us towards the fire, and Bonnie barks, uncomfortable at Sec's proximity. He has a similar, understandable effect on Norma-Jean.

"But why is he here then?" She demands. "He's in league with the Dollarks, or whatever they're called. He said so! And," she adds grudgingly, "I think he keeps calling me spawn!"

Frank lets out a dry cough of a chuckle.

"You certainly have a way with people as ever, Sec."

Sec cannot help himself smiling a little, as if he feels that he does not have the right to be comfortable.

"Mister Sec here is not all Dalek. See, he is also a man I used to know, a Mister Diagoras. He was the meanest man I ever set eyes on. I'd even say he was worse than a Dalek in some ways; he was a traitor. He helped them. I hate to think how the two of you came to be one, Sec, but I'd say in some ways you made a vast improvement of him."

"This guy's nothing to be afraid of Norma," I add, "not while I'm around."

My niece does not look convinced, but she shrugs her shoulders. Her brown eyes look unusually large and watery. She must be so tired.

"Okay…"

This seems to suffice, and Sec visibly relaxes.

With the sudden, uncertain hope in which he has provided, I feel on edge, but as if in an exhausted stupor. Too much has happened and I am spent from worry.

Norma-Jean looks up suddenly.

"D'you know if Mom and Dad are okay?"

God. I had completely forgotten. I fumble in my pockets for my phone, and find them empty. It must still be in the living room back in Brooklyn.

"Where are they going?" Sec asks.

"L.A."

Norma-Jean looks up in horror.

"Don't they get a lot of earthquakes there?" She asks, alarmed. "My teacher Mr Pittard said so in Geography. If we had it bad here, then it'll be really, really bad there!"

I halt my search. Regardless of my phone missing, I wouldn't be able to contact them because…

"They should still be in the air." I realise, with a sigh. "They'll have been flying while the quake was happening. And we know that grandpa's alright."

"Still," Frank announces. "We have an advantage here that no-one else in the US has, and that is that if what you say is true, Mister Sec, then we know what has caused this ungodly phenomena. We need to send out an official warning to the authorities."

I nod.

"Sec, you can do that using your casing, can't you?"

The hybrid, evidently feeling less alienated, nods in the affirmative.

"I can do that easily. I will start right away. I can go through the U.N.I.T. network if necessary. They may or may not recognise Dalek technology. And if they do, then at least they shall know what to expect."

"And I have a telephone out back." Frank assures us. "I've never quite adapted o these new-fangled cell-watcha-ma-call 'ems. Use it for whatever you want."

There is a familiar snapping sound, and Sec pushes quickly off his seat, Norma-Jean leans round to watch him, but I hastily advise her against it.

Moments later he crawls out and makes his way towards the screen door.

Norma-Jean informs me that it is really gross.

When I emerge later to check on Lewis, I see Sec perched, eyestalk glowing upon the dormer on the sloping roof. He stands against the treeline as a now strangely comforting silhouette.

The house is surrounded by a wide, scruffy veranda, and the previous warmth of the weather has brought the scent of pine into the air. Now, the air has enough of a bite to it to cause my breath to frost.

There is a small jetty that stretches out a little way into the lake. Old Frank must use it to rest fishing poles.

On the end of it, I spy Lewis sitting in a drawn in way, his legs dangling over the edge over the water.

I walk over to him. He is shaking, his arms drawn around him, and his jacket doing little to protect him from the cold.

"You might want to come inside." I tell him. "Frank's let out the spare bedroom to my niece, and is letting us sleep on the couches. You look freezing."

The musician shakes his head. His hazel eyes stare out at our alien sky.

When he makes no further reply, I set myself down beside him. I am not too close, but just close enough that he may feel the benefit of me being here. I am wearing a blanket from the house, but still, every inch of my skin prickles.

"I find it quite inspiring, actually." He says, after a while. "Terrible things sometimes are."

"I kind of get what you mean." I say. And he's right. My eyes follow the planets; I count a total sixteen. This does not include the circle closest, which while dark, can only be our moon.

"I didn't know he looked like that." Lewis says. "The hybrid, I mean. I knew he was half human, but…"

I glance back at the roof, and see that Sec has turned his dome head away from us, like a telescope. He can probably hear us, but he has heard whatever we have to say before.

"He's very sensitive about it, if that helps."

Lewis sighs.

"I thought I'd known him since I was a kid. But apparently, I didn't know him at all, after all."

He looks at me with a mixture of pity and hopelessness.

"You get why I thought you ought to keep your distance from him then? He took us all the way out here for no discernible reason. Okay, that Frank guy was good to let us in, but I have no idea who he is."

"I know. I know."

I stare out over the lake. I couldn't point to where we are on a map. We may no longer even be in New York. The erratic, often ludicrous mind of our mutual friend and abductor is something I can take into account, something I have come to understand. I feel violated; I didn't ask to be snatched away like this. I have no control; I cannot contact my parents, or any of my friends.

"I wanted to call my Dad." I admit. "My brother too, once he lands. He'll want to talk to his little girl. Something's wrong with Frank's landline. He's trying to repair it. I guess my Mom deserves to be warned too. They need to get out of the city. Only I imagine that panic will have everyone on the move."

"I guess so."

"I suppose you'd want to call your folks too." I muse.

But Lewis shakes his head.

"I lost contact with my Dad years ago. My Mom's dead."

"I'm sorry. I didn't realise."

His eyes are fixed on the lake. The glare of the sky is reflected in the lenses of his glasses. He bends his head, unhooks them from his ears.

"She died a long time ago. And as for my Dad, well, I'd have to be crazy to want to call him. It's more my friends I'm worried about."

I think of Melanie when he says this, and I feel a lump rise in my throat. To think I only saw her this morning, after so long. We left on a bad foot, her opinion of me probably has soured forever. And now, I don't know what will happen to her. I don't know what will happen to anyone.

"It's a shame." Lewis says, and he lets out a short laugh. "I really did want to see you at the beach. It would have been nice. We could have done something normal together for once."

He looks at me, and in the dark I can make out his face, bony, but the eyes soft, kind. The freckles on his nose make him look boyish. I didn't think I liked boyish, not in white guys, not in anyone. I feel myself smile.

"Who says we can't?" I feel reckless. "We could go right now! There must be a car around here. Drive for miles. Dive straight in. What do we have to lose?"

"You could be right." He pauses. "Well, we _do_ have a lake. That's something."

"Yeah. A lake will do."

We sit outside, saying nothing, both thinking similar things. When at last the cold gets too unbearable, and despite our fear exhaustion slips into our bones, we pick ourselves up and head back into the house.

Frank's carved wooden clock tells us that it is a little past five in the morning.

But there is no dawn for us here.


	10. Chapter Nine: A Small Prophesy

Chapter Nine: A Small Prophesy

_This transcript was taken from a conversation occurred at 5:00, twelve hours and twenty four minutes before all drone units were dismissed. Observational footage was also captured. Speakers are marked in the order in which they speak. _

Guard: Halt. The prototype is not yet ready. There can be no distractions. Why do you wish to enter?

Messenger: I have an announcement from the Supreme One. It is imperative that I am given access.

Guard: State your purpose.

Messenger: There has been another prophesy.

Guard: Of any importance?

Messenger: It has yet to be confirmed. It was easily deciphered. It concerns the Patient.

_There is silence. The guarding unit A appears to consider._

Guard: Very well. You are granted access.

_The entrance to the repair ward shudders open. The messenger unit enters, followed shortly by the guard. Footage switches to repair ward camera. Two units, with appendages suited to welding, appear to be carrying out maintenance on a third._

Guard: Cease your actions! A prophesy has been announced. The audience of the Patient is requested.

_The engineers stop, and turn to face the arrivals. There are two of them. Their patient, however, is difficult to make out on the grainy film. _

Engineer One: The Patient is not conscious. It is currently unable to receive any announcement.

Messenger: It cannot wait. The Supreme One wishes for its meaning to be interpreted.

_Something in the darkness shifts. A light, yellow and round, begins to glow dimly from the corner of the screen. The attention of Engineer Two, who has not yet spoken is suddenly focussed on the light. It draws backwards, abandoning its tools. _

Patient: A prophesy? And it concerns me?

_The voice of the Patient is different from the others. It is lower, slower, as if every word is painful to speak. Inexplicably, the other Units follow Engineer Two's suit, and refocus eyes, draw backwards, lower their weaponry. This is done subtly, so that only by observing the footage carefully can such a reaction be noticed._

Messenger: …Affirmative.

Patient: And may I be perceptive enough to predict, that the source of this prophecy came from the Abomination.

Messenger: Correct.

Engineer Two: The Abomination speaks senselessly. He is insane. It cannot be taken seriously.

_The darkness stirs. The object in which the two engineering units appear to have been operating on gratingly glides out of the dark. Coils of wire and cables appear to be attached to its sides, limiting its movements. _

Patient: And yet, to him you owe your existence.

_None of the other units answer. It becomes perceivable from the image, that Unit X appears to be similar in shape to the others, which are identical save the appendages of the engineers, but is notably taller and wider in size._

Patient: I wish to hear the prophesy.

Messenger: It is not long, Perceptive One.

Patient: Then relay it.

Messenger: The prophesy reads as follows… "Beware the Black Dalek."

_On hearing the prophesy all focus falls once again on the patient. They continue to keep their distance. The dim yellow light is unwavering. _

Patient: That is all?

Messenger: Affirmative.

Patient: Then, I am in the position to interpret the prophesy.

_There is a hissing and a clatter. The cables and wires fall away from the patient. The other units appear to back away even further, and his time they make little effort to hide their caution. As its movements are no longer inhibited, the patient glides gradually into the centre of the screen._

Engineer One: The prototype is not ready, Perceptive One! You cannot mobilise.

Patient: Then finish it. Make haste. I wish to mobilise with the drones.

Messenger: But there are reports that the Abomination has become uneasy.

Patient: Excellent.

Engineer One: I do not understand. The Abominations abilities mean that only an ill omen can-

Patient: Is it possible? Do I detect…_fear_?

_Engineer One stays rigid. _

Engineer One: Negative. It is not possible for our kind to feel.

Patient: You lie, filth. Is it not fabled that I see all?

All Units: Affirmative, Perceptive One.

Patient: Did I and I alone, alongside our creator survive the time war?

All Units: Affirmative.

Patient: In my task, have I ever been known to be…defective?

Guard: You are fabled to have faced and searched…the predator himself.

Patient: It is no fable. It is the truth. And I intend to face him once again. Continue.

_The two engineers direct their gaze at one another. Then they raise their tools, and sparks fly as they proceed with their task. The guard and the messenger back out of the repair ward, and the mechanical door seals itself as they exit._

Patient: "Beware", indeed? Our enemies, as I interpret as the audience, must me so much more than aware. I _am_ the Black Dalek.

_As he finishes speaking, a trembling mechanical growl escapes from his casing. It is probably just a machinery glitch, but to an untrained ear, it could almost sound like deep laughter. _


End file.
